


No Haven In This World

by KreweOfImp



Series: Prince of Darkness [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, But Lots of Pain First, Castiel Whump, Dark, Dean Has Nightmares, Dean Whump, Eventual Smut, Flashbacks, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Some Comfort, I'm Going to Hell, In a Nightmare, It's so bad you guys, M/M, Not that that makes it better, Panic Attacks, Past Lucifer/Dean Winchester, Past Lucifer/Sam Winchester, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape, Season/Series 11 Spoilers, So much angst, Strap in, The Author Regrets Everything, We're In For a Rough Ride, You Cannot Possibly Hate Me More Than I Hate Myself, eventually, no really, this is not a nice fic, violent rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:45:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7196144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KreweOfImp/pseuds/KreweOfImp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Months ago, Dean's world was shattered in one terrible, life-changing night.  For a brief, perfect moment he had everything he'd ever wanted, but it was all a lie.  Somehow, he went on--what choice did he have, when The Darkness threatened the world?  </p><p>So much has happened since then.  Dean has moved on, practically forgotten it ever happened--so when Amara finally does what Sam and Dean couldn't, finally frees Cas from Lucifer, Dean knows everything's going to be okay.  They're all going to be okay.</p><p>It's over.  He can let it go, forget it ever happened.</p><p>Right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Gluttons For Our Doom

**Author's Note:**

> As you will see, I have taken some liberties with the events of "Alpha and Omega" to allow for this narrative to take the shape it demands.
> 
> [If you have not read [Half the Naked Distance](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6151447), stop here. This fic will not make sense without it. Start there, and then come back to this, if you think you can stand it.]
> 
> Welcome to the beginning of a painful journey. When someone has been through something as terrible as Dean has, the road to recovery is slow and long. If you're hoping for a quick fix fic, this is not it. This work is a true partner to its predecessor. It is not fluffy. It is not sweet. It is dark. It is painful. It is grim.
> 
> This will hurt--but if you can stick with me, if you can stick with our boys, in the end there will at least be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel (and no, it's not a train). Will this have a happy ending? I wouldn't put it that way. There will be no joyfully waltzing off into the sunset. I can't promise you that. I won't promise you that.
> 
> What I will promise you is hope. Hope for something better. Hope for recovery.
> 
> This is a story of pain. This is a story of violation. This is a story of anger. This is a story of hurt. This is a story of loss.
> 
> And this is a story of redemption. 
> 
> Perhaps most of all, this is a story of love.

“Lucifer’s gone.”

The words spill out in the familiar gravel and Dean has maybe never been more relieved in his life.  The devil is gone; maybe even dead (he can hope).  Sam’s torturer, Castiel’s captor, Dean’s _(don’t think about it don’t talk about it don’t remember it)_ is gone.  Cas is back.

It’s over.

Right?

He tells himself it’s over, that now he can let it go.  Like it never happened.  It wasn’t Cas; it was Lucifer.  They can just go back to the way things were.  Like it never happened.

He almost fools himself.

* * *

If not for Chuck, if not for the immediacy of how entirely fucked they all are, he might wonder whether it’s another trick.  Whether it’s another play.  Lucifer is always working an angle; nobody knows this better than Dean.

But Chuck would know instantly, and he accepts without question that Castiel is the only resident of the man formerly known as Jimmy Novak.

So it’s real. 

So it’s over.

Right?

* * *

 

It’s just the three of them.  Team Free Will, reunited.  For all of five minutes, but still.

There’s no time for it, not really, but something has to be said.  Cas looks at them—at _him—_ with wounded eyes, steps tentatively, won’t come too close.

Sam’s the one to speak, of course.  It ought to be Dean, would be Dean if things had been different.  If—but things aren’t different, so Sam’s the one to speak.

“How are you, Cas?” His voice is gentle, face open and compassionate.  He shoots a glance at Dean, wordlessly telling him that he ought to speak up, that Cas needs to hear from him.  It’s true, but Dean can’t find the words, isn’t sure whether any exist.  And Sam knows.  He knows enough.  When Dean shakes his head just slightly, Sam doesn’t push it.

Cas is silent for a moment, shoulders hunched.  His voice is too quiet when it tumbles out.  “I was just so stupid.”

“No, Cas,” Sam says, “it wasn’t stupid.  You were right.  You were right to let Lucifer ride shotgun.  And I wouldn’t have done it.  Hell, I had the option and I turned it down.  And Dean—“ he cuts off, knowing that’s treading into dangerous territory, and all three of them pretend that didn’t happen.

“It didn’t work,” Cas says, staring at the floor, staring at his hands, and this time Dean manages to speak, grates out words he knows are true but that he still doesn’t quite believe.

“But it was our best shot,” he tells Cas, still not quite looking at him.  “You stepped up.”

“I was just trying to help,” Cas says, voice nearly cracking.  For maybe the first time since Lucifer was evicted, he looks directly at Dean, his eyes pleading for understanding.  For forgiveness.

Dean doesn’t know how to give him either.

Sam takes over again.  “You do help, Cas,” he says, and Dean nods once, hard.  It’s true.  He does help.  They do need him.  He has to know that.  “You’re always there, you know.  You’re the best friend we’ve ever had.  You’re our family, Cas.”

Cas’s voice is unsteady and small.  “Thank you.”  The words clearly mean a lot to him.  They would mean so much more if they came from Dean.  They ought to come from Dean.  Maybe in another universe they would, those words and more.  A universe in which Dean doesn’t remember what it feels like to have Cas-but-not-Cas inside him.  A universe in which he can’t still hear the echo of cruel laughter while he feels Lucifer’s seed dripping down his thighs.

This isn’t that universe.

Dean doesn’t speak.

 _There will be time,_ he tells himself, _when this is all over.  There will be time for us to talk.  We just have to get through this.  We just have to save the world.  Again.  There will be time._

* * *

There won’t be time, because Dean is not carrying the bomb, Dean _is_ the bomb.

This is it.

Some part of him, some small and cowardly part is almost relieved, because now he doesn’t have to face it.  Now he doesn’t have to figure out how to fix it.  Now he doesn’t have to struggle to go back to the way things were _before._

He turns from Chuck and Cas is there, and he is holding on by a thread.  Dean can see it.  This is it, so when Cas reaches for him, Dean gathers him in, wraps his arms tightly around him.  “Okay,” he says.  “Okay, alright,” and he hopes it conveys everything he can’t say.  That even though it’s _not_ okay, maybe someday it would’ve been.  That despite everything, Dean still—

He draws back, because he doesn’t know how to handle the fact that he wants to clutch Cas even tighter and shove him away at the same time.  That the familiar arms around him for the first time since _(don’t think about it don’t talk about it don’t remember it)_ somehow make his skin crawl at the same time that they make him feel whole.

“I could go with you,” Cas says, and Dean really looks at him, locks eyes with him.

“No, I gotta do this alone,” Dean tells him.  Cas nods once, steps back.  Their eyes linger on each other.

Dean wishes there was more time.  Not much, just a little.  Just enough to find better words.  Just a few.

There’s not, and he doesn’t know how to give Cas forgiveness, so instead he gives him something better.  He gives him Sam.  He entrusts Cas with his little brother.  He doesn’t need to say it; Cas would do it regardless, would look out for Sam forever.  Dean says it anyway, and Cas knows what it means.  Knows that for Dean, there’s no greater expression of faith. 

Cas understands.

Dean says goodbye.

He walks away.

It’s over.

Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make no promises on when updates will happen. I'm not giving y'all a posting schedule. This is a difficult fic to write. It requires me to be in a difficult headspace. It's also a fic that works on its own timeline. It happens organically, more than anything else I have ever written. When it whispers to me, when it claws at me in the dark, I get up and I answer its call. 
> 
> What I will promise you is this: I will not leaving you hanging permanently. No Haven In This World WILL be finished. The ending is already planned out and partially written.
> 
> We're in for a rough journey, my friends. I'm grateful to have you along with me in the dark.


	2. Of The Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Dean, you gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you.”_  
> 
> He needs so many things. But what does he need most?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks and love to [majestic_duck](http://archiveofourown.org/users/majestic_duck/pseuds/majestic_duck) and [WinJennster](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WinJennster/pseuds/WinJennster) for beta reading!

“Dean, you gave me what I needed most. I want to do the same for you.”

Amara’s face is open and warm as she looks at him, as she and Chuck dissolve.

_You gave me what I needed most._

_I want to do the same for you._

What does he need most?

Jesus, the list is long as fuck.  He’d settle for starting with a stiff drink or ten.  Then maybe a time machine, a way back to before _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ everything fell apart.  Again.

Instead, what he gets is a fucking forest.

No, seriously.  It’s a _forest._ In the middle of God’s-sister-only-knows-where. 

One moment he is standing in the garden watching the final wisps of what used to be Chuck and Amara evaporate, and then all of a sudden it’s dark—like, middle of the night dark—and he’s in some of the thickest woods he’s ever seen.

 _This_ is what he needs most?  A nature hike?  Man, he had just decided that Amara was never really evil after all, but he’s rethinking it now, because this is some kind of fucked up.  All he wants to do is call Sammy.  Since the sun came back on (he definitely saw the sun come back on, even if it’s nowhere to be found now), they must be thinking that the plan worked as intended.  That Dean set off the bomb, that he and Amara were blown to oblivion together.

Dean has to tell them it’s not true.  Crowley won’t give two fucks, but Sam and Cas… Dean knows how he would feel if it were one of them.  How he _has_ felt when it _was_ one of them.  He doesn’t want to put them through that any longer than necessary.

All he fucking wants to do is call Sammy.

But he can’t.

Because there’s no reception out in the middle of the fucking woods.

That, even more than the apparently deserted wilderness, tells Dean that he really isn’t anywhere near civilization.  Or, hell, maybe he is but it’s halfway across the world, in some country in which his cell service doesn’t exist.  Do these woods look foreign?  He examines the plants and trees for a minute, uselessly, because what the fuck does he know about foliage?

So, okay, he’s out here in the middle of nowhere with no cell reception, no provisions, and the cryptic statement from Amara that she wanted to give him _what he needed most._ He figures his best hope is that maybe there are some campers nearby who can help point him back toward a place that’ll have the things he needs.  Like cell phone service.  Transportation.  Whiskey.  Maybe even a bacon cheeseburger.  He’s earned one of those, right?  He did just save the world.  Again.

Ordinarily, there’s no way in hell he would randomly start shouting at the top of his voice without having any idea of who or what might be lurking, but he’s got literally nothing else, so fuck it.

_“HELLO?  ANYBODY OUT THERE?”_

Silence, then…is that _rustling?_

Well, yeah, it is, there’s nothing _but_ rustling.  It’s the freaking woods, and there’s a breeze.  Point is, Dean thinks maybe he can hear a _different_ kind of rustling.  Like of a large body moving through underbrush.

So if there’s someone there, why aren’t they shouting back?  Maybe they’re scared?  He tries again, aiming to sound as nonthreatening as possible, given that he’s bellowing as loudly as he can.

_“HEY, I’M LOST!  I’M JUST TRYING TO FIND MY WAY BACK TO SAFETY!  HELLO?”_

Yeah, that’s definitely rustling, and it’s getting louder, and it’s speeding up.  There’s an urgency to the movement, and just as Dean starts to worry that whoever or whatever he’s hearing is about to attack him, a strangled voice floats through a thick grove of trees.

_“Dean?!”_

Wait— _what?_ There’s—that’s not—it can’t possibly be— _can it?_

His voice is a good deal quieter than his original bellow, but still more than loud enough.

 _“Cas??_ Is that you?”

It is.

“Dean!”

The familiar form finally breaks through the dense layer of growth, staggering into the small clearing Dean stands in.  Cas’s face is a little dirty, scratched up by at least a dozen twigs (or so Dean assumes), presumably while he was fighting so hard to get through the foliage to Dean.

Cas stands for a moment, his jaw agape, disbelief and desperate hope etched on every line of his face.

“Cas,” Dean says, relief crashing through him, and then he is brought up short.  If things were different—if this was _before…_ he would know exactly what to say.  Wouldn’t hesitate to dive into the meat of things, tell Cas what happened, demand to know where Sam is, where _they_ are.  But things aren’t different, and this is _after._ So he trails off, settles for staring, unsure where to even begin.

“Dean,” Cas whispers, and then he appears to recover himself a little bit, squares his shoulders, sets his jaw. “You’re not real,” he says, his voice hollow, “you died.  The banishing—it has addled me.  I am…seeing things.  My mind is showing me what I wish to see.  You are _not real_ _._ ”

“I am so!” Dean says, caught between irrational irritation and being touched that he’s what Cas wishes to see—and that’s when the rest of what Cas said catches up to him. “I’m definitely real, and—wait, what?  _Banishing?_  Who the hell banished you?  Was it Crowley?  That fucking snake.  Where’s Sam?”

Cas’s jaw has fallen open again, his face draining of color.  He takes a halting step forward, then another and still a third, until he stands less than an arm’s length from Dean.  Dean lets him come, doesn’t give in to either of the competing urges that tell him to hastily step away and to fling himself forward and wrap his arms desperately around the angel.  Instead, he pauses himself, thinks about what it must be doing to Cas to see him, after the certainty that he had died.  He speaks again, his voice gentle.  “Cas.  It’s me.  Really me.  I didn’t die.  It’s a—it’s a long story, and I’ll tell you everything, but first—“ Dean cuts off as a trembling hand lifts, stays unnaturally still as Castiel’s calloused fingers skate feather-light over his cheekbone.  Cas’s eyes widen and brighten, a whole world of emotion flickering through them in a heartbeat.  Bewilderment.  Disbelief.  Shock.  Acceptance.  Relief.  Joy. 

With a groan, the angel falls into his arms, clutches strong fingers in the front of Dean’s shirt, shaking with what Dean is pretty fucking sure are sobs.

Instinctively, Dean’s arms come up to catch him, to cradle him, and _fuck,_ it feels amazing.  It feels—there aren’t words for what it feels like to hold Cas, to feel the angel’s warmth against him in a moment when they’re both whole and well and nobody’s about to die.  It feels like something he’s been waiting for for months.  For years.  Forever.  It feels like completion.

It feels…it feels like _what he needs most._

The second the thought occurs, Dean clamps down on it hard, arms tightening convulsively around Cas before they fall away.  Because the second he forces that _need_ away, everything else comes crashing back in.  What Cas said.  Where they are (where the hell are they?).  And of course, always, always, Lucifer.  The _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)._

“Cas,” he says, his own voice not as steady as he would like, “c’mon, man.”

The sound of his voice seems to bring Cas back to himself, and suddenly he stiffens, as if realizing what he’s done.  His tight grasp on Dean’s shirt breaks and he stumbles back a step, two.

Dean curses himself for a fool at the fleeting urge to grab him and reel him back in.

For half a second, the dim light from the moon illuminates Cas’s face, etched into lines of pain, laid entirely bare, and Dean realizes maybe for the first time that Cas is at least as broken as he is.  That Lucifer—that _it—_ tore him to shreds as surely as it did Dean.

Then, just like that, the moment is over so quickly that Dean could almost convince himself it never happened, that he imagined it.  Cas’s face smooths out into the near-expressionlessness he’s so good at.  He squares his shoulders, and his voice is even gruffer than usual.  “Dean, forgive me, I was—“

Dean doesn’t let him get any farther than that, breaks in almost too quickly.  “No, Cas, don’t.  You don’t need to.  Please.”  And it’s true, Cas doesn’t need to apologize for that moment of—what?  Not weakness.  Openness, maybe.  There’s nothing to forgive—not for that.  But maybe even more than that, Dean can’t bear to hear any pleas for forgiveness from Cas.

Because he doesn’t know how to grant it.

They stand there for a moment in silence, eyes locked, greedily drinking one another in but unable to bridge the distance.  It is maybe the longest thirty seconds of Dean’s life, and that is saying something.

Then, finally, as if it is physically painful to speak, Cas grates out a single word.  “How?”

That question—it could mean 10,000 different things, but Dean latches onto the most obvious of them, given the circumstances.  How is he alive?  How is the world still here? 

Dean tells him, sketches out the basic shape of what happened with Amara and Chuck.  Cas very nearly smiles once or twice, listening to the way Dean was able to cut to the heart of what Amara really wanted, what she really needed.  There was maybe nobody else in the world who could’ve gotten through to her, nobody else who understands fucked up, intense, contentious, desperately close sibling relationships the same way Dean does, and Cas knows it.

There’s more, of course, he only gives the bare bones description, but for now that’s all they have time for, because he’s remembering what Cas said, and he needs to know what happened.  As his story wraps up (he conveniently fails to mention the part where Amara told him she would give him what he needed most), Dean segues right into the question.  “You said something about being banished—what the hell happened?”

Cas startles, as if just remembering how he came to be in the middle of the woods, his face paling a little.  Quickly, in a few short sentences, he tells Dean what happened—leaving the bar where they waited, heading back to the bunker with Sam, the unknown blonde woman, the rapid-fire banishing.

_Fuck._

His first instinct is to lash out at Cas, to curse him for not telling Dean instantly.  He steps on this urge hard, remembering vividly that naked pain in the angel’s face, conscious of just how fragile Cas must be underneath the impressively calm façade.

And anyway, what the fuck would it do, to yell at Cas?  He’s been banished, which means he’s significantly weakened.  His wings are broken; he can’t exactly zap them back to the bunker.  And Dean himself would’ve probably been short-circuited by seeing Cas if the situations had been reversed.

Maybe just this once, he finds it in himself to be generous, and bites back the words of condemnation that want so badly to spill out.

“Okay, we gotta get back there.”  He settles for saying the obvious, in hopes that Cas will have missed the near-miss, whatever Dean’s face must have done in the heartbeat before he got his temper under control.

It’s no use, he can tell that Cas saw it, but they don’t speak of it, and anyway, there are things that have to happen, and both of them have gotten damn good at repressing the fuck out of emotion in order to do what needs to be done.  They wouldn’t have survived, otherwise.

“Do you know where we are?” Dean asks, hoping desperately that Cas hasn’t been so addled by the banishing that even that information is beyond him.

Cas closes his eyes for a moment, then blinks them open, nodding once, firmly.  “Montana,” he tells Dean, who is actually incredibly relieved.  It could’ve been so much worse.  They could be in the fucking Ukraine or something—Cas has gone further than that when banished, more than once.  Montana is doable—as long as they’re not 300 miles from civilization.  Before he can open his mouth, Cas answers the unspoken question.  “Kootenai National Forest, near the Washington state line.  We are approximately eight miles east of Libby, a small town in the middle of the forest.  We should at least be able to…requisition a car there.”

Steal one, he means, and Dean is inexplicably proud of the angel for being more focused on getting back to Sam than on petty concerns like property rights.

With no discussion, they set out together, grimly forcing their way through some of the thickest forest Dean has ever seen.  Cas _is_ weakened by the banishing, clearly exhausted, but he never complains and never asks for a break.  If things were different, Dean would give him one anyway, would pretend that he needed a rest—but _Sam._ Something terrible has happened to Sam, Dean is increasingly certain of it, and there’s no time for coddling.  Still, it’s slow going, and they don’t speak more than necessary. 

There is so much they could say to one another, so much they probably _should_ say to each other, but it would require bridging a gap far broader than the hundreds of miles of wilderness that surround them.

So they are silent, and _it_ stands between them, a hulking monolith they can’t look at, can’t escape, can’t talk about.

Where would they even begin?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You will note that I have again taken liberties with the events of the finale. The set-up was honestly perfect for my purposes, the pay-off just wasn't quite right...so I changed it. In service to that, Mary Winchester's return has been eliminated altogether. What Dean needs most, in _this_ world isn't his mother. It's much simpler and much more complicated than that.


	3. Happy in the Sorrow Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, what the fuck can you really do but laugh?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title is taken from an Indigo Girls song (as are all the other chapter titles, the name of the work itself, the name of its predecessor, and the name of the series. What can I say? I like themes). What makes this chapter noteworthy is that thus far, this is the only portion of this series whose title is not pulled from the song "Prince of Darkness." This particular chapter title is stolen from a song of the same title.
> 
> More notes after the chapter!

They just can’t catch a break.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise.  If there’s one thing history has proven over and over, it’s that there’s always another shoe waiting to drop on the Winchesters.

Dean strongly suspects that whoever thought of that particular turn of phrase was assuming there were only two shoes, but at this point he’s pretty much lost track of all the shoes that have dropped on him, Sam, Cas, and basically anybody else that’s unlucky enough to get too close to them.  Maybe it’s the universe paying them back for that shoe Sam lost?

Whatever.  Inadequate metaphor or not, the point is that nothing is ever easy.  Not even now, after Dean somehow managed to save the world without unleashing some even greater evil (and that’s, like, never happened before).

As it turns out, this time the other shoe is waiting until they make it back to the bunker.

The trip back there with Cas is…well, it’s less of a complete shit-show than it probably could be, and at this point that’s about as good as Dean figures they’re likely to get.  They make it to Libby right as Dean is starting to think they’ll either have to stop for a rest or he’ll need to carry Cas.  The angel is clearly at the very limits of his stamina.  Banishing takes a hell of a lot out of him—always has—and it’s not like he’d gone into this whole endeavor in peak form.  Being crammed into a corner of his mind while Lucifer took his body for a joyride wasn’t exactly smooth sailing, especially considering what Lucifer had _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)._  

Anyway, point is, Cas is on his last legs when they finally stagger out of the woods and into the idyllic little town.

The first thing Dean does when they get in range of the town (and thus have cell signal back) is start calling Sam’s phone.  It goes immediately to voicemail.

Dean tries to tell himself this isn’t an ominous sign.  After all, Sam thinks he’s dead.  Maybe he just wanted some peace and quiet to mourn Dean privately.  He might even be able to believe it, if not for Cas.  Sam saw Cas get banished right in front of him.  Even if Sam somehow managed to neutralize whoever the hell the unknown blonde lady was right away, the first thing he would’ve done would be to call Cas—and Cas has no missed calls.  Grief or no, desire for solitude or no, Sam would have done everything in his power to make sure Cas was okay.  As far as Sam was concerned, Cas was kind of all he had left.  Sam wouldn’t have thrown that away.

No, if Sam’s phone is off, it’s not because he turned it off himself.

Dean’s phone informs him that it’s just shy of five am as they drag ass into town; much later (earlier?) than Dean would’ve liked.  The woods were thick and it was pretty damn slow going; a distance that might have taken less than two hours on good terrain stretched into nearly six. The sun will be coming up soon.  People will be coming out of their houses to head to work.  It’s not ideal, since it means any car they swipe is likely to be missed sooner rather than later. 

He hates to do it, but Dean goes ahead and takes the time to hunt down a nondescript car which shows signs of not being moved for at least a week or so.  It’s covered in a layer of dust dramatically thicker than the cars around it and there are some leaves and dirt gathered around the tires.  It’s probably the best they can do on short notice, and Cas is barely on his feet at this point.

Dean knows how wiped out the angel is when he falls asleep almost as soon as Dean pulls the car out of its parking space.  It’s got a full tank, thank—well, shit, thank Chuck, Dean guesses—and it means they can put Libby far behind them before worrying about risking a gas station with surveillance video.

It takes every ounce of self-control Dean’s got, but he drives sedately, obeying all the rules of the road, only exceeding the speed limit by three or four miles per hour.  They absolutely cannot afford to get pulled over.  Everybody knows everybody in small towns like Libby, and two strange men tearing up the roads (especially two dirty, scraped up men) would be bound to attract the wrong kind of attention.  With that in mind, Dean is a model driver until the town has long since vanished from the rear view mirror.

But then all bets are off.  The car isn’t exactly rolling in horsepower (it’s a Camry; maybe ten years old, reasonably well-maintained, but nothing special), and Dean pushes it to its limits.  He stops only for gas, tearing his eyes away from the road just long enough to make sure that Cas is still breathing from time to time.  He is, of course—no seraph has yet died of exhaustion, no matter how profound, and Cas is unlikely to be the first—but the angel doesn’t so much as twitch for hours.

There’s something both oddly comforting and unsettling about the presence of his comatose passenger.  Comforting because, at the least, the fact that Cas is right here, face smooshed against the window as his chest rises and falls rhythmically, means that he’s one less thing to worry about.  He’s here, he’s safe, and given some good rest, he’ll be back to—well, not normal, Dean supposes, because what the fuck would normal even _be_ at this point, but back to functional, anyway.  So, yeah, his presence here is a good thing.  Dean doesn’t have to stress about him, and at the moment, he really only has enough soul-crushing, heart-clenching, existential terror for one of the people he lo—cares most about.  Sam’s got the market entirely cornered on that at present. 

It’s unsettling because…fuck, it just is.  Having _Cas_ back is still new as fuck, period, and it’s not like they’ve had a whole lot of time to figure out how the hell to relate to each other, how to navigate this new space between them after what _(don’t talk_ _about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)…_ after.  Just… _after._

And Dean’s not a fool, contrary to popular opinion and a fair amount of evidence.  He knows that at some point they’re going to have to figure this out.  At some point he and Cas are going to have to actually sort out how to coexist, how to be in proximity, how to talk to each other, how to work through—or ideally, completely ignore, because denial is a beautiful thing that Dean’s gotten really damn good at—everything that _(don’t talk about it don’t_ _think about it don’t remember it)._ At some point, yeah, but not now.  Because _Sam._

Cas finally shifts and grunts almost 300 miles in.  They’re just past a little town called Deer Lodge (seriously, Montana?  It’s like the state is _trying_ to be a stereotype of itself) and Dean is just deciding that he’s gonna have to stop in Butte—not just because they need more gas (though they do), but because he really fucking has to pee.  He’s been putting it off, not just because it’s important to make good time, but because the thought of leaving a sleeping Cas alone in the car makes him uneasy.  It’s ridiculously silly, yeah—what’s gonna happen to a fucking angel in the three minutes Dean is taking a piss?  Even if someone did get it into their head to cause trouble, Cas isn’t exactly defenseless, no matter how much he may look it.  And he does; mussed and grubby and sporting a three-day stubble, long lashes grazing his cheeks, he looks…well, shit, positively _angelic._ That’s beside the point, though, and Dean’s too busy pretending he didn’t notice any of it to give more than a cursory thought to the fact that Castiel, angel of the Lord, doesn’t actually need a babysitter.

Going with his gut has yet to steer Dean wrong in the last twenty-four hours, so he’s sticking with don’t-leave-the-passed-out-angel-alone-in-the-car.  And sure, he could wake Cas up, but he’s loath to do it.  He just looks so damn—he just clearly needs the rest, is all.  He’s been through some shit, and that’s what’s inspiring Dean’s intensely protective vibes at the moment.

Anyway, the point is, Dean and his bladder are both pretty fucking relieved when a wordless, slightly interrogative sound rumbles through Cas’s throat as he starts to sit up, eyes blinking sleepily, first at the road and then at Dean, who shoots him a tight smile.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” he says, as Cas grinds the heels of his hands into his own eyes in a gesture so damn reminiscent of your average sleepy toddler that Dean feels his heart clench a little.

“How long have I—what time is—where are we?” Cas croaks, apparently unable to decide on which question is most pressing.  Dean goes ahead and answers all of them.

“A little over three hours, just after eight am, and about 30 miles out of Butte, Montana.  Which, by the way, is a fucking _monster_ of a state.  Wish your wings were working. What I wouldn’t give for you to be able to zap us home.” 

It was an errant thought, not a condemnation, but Cas grimaces a little, flinching almost imperceptibly.  He still blames himself for the angels losing their wings in the fall, although Dean’s long since acknowledged that the fault for that lies squarely in Metatron’s lap (no matter how much the little schmuck may have redeemed himself in the end), but Dean somehow thinks this probably doesn’t have much to do with that.  This is more about the fact that Cas sees it as one more way he’s let Dean down, and goddammit, now he’s gotta mop up _that_ damage.

“No, Cas,” Dean says quickly, not even sure where the hell he’s going with this or how he’s gonna fix it, “I didn’t mean it like—“

Cas doesn’t let him get further than that.  He doesn’t want to have that conversation, apparently, doesn’t want to hear Dean console him.  Dean can’t say why—maybe Cas is too attached to his self-flagellation, maybe he thinks any words of comfort Dean spoke would be lies, maybe it’s something else altogether.  Whatever the case, he’s having none of it, and Dean’s almost a little impressed at how good he’s gotten at the proud Winchester tradition of Ignore It Till It Goes Away.  “By my estimation we are approximately 850 miles from Lebanon, on a direct path.  I imagine it is rather more than that via road.”

“GPS says just shy of 1100 miles,” Dean confirms wearily.  “We’re gonna stop up ahead in Butte.  Tank’s getting low, I could use a snack, and I definitely need the john before I spring a leak.”

“When is the last time you slept?”  Cas asks, and Dean can’t really tell whether it’s a direct answer to anything he just said or not.

“Dunno,” Dean tells him honestly.  “Can’t see that it matters,” he says, opting to go with Cas’s Ignore It Till It Goes Away strategy, “I’ll sleep once we know what’s happened to Sammy.”  Obviously he didn’t sleep last night, cause they were trekking through the woods.  And the night before that they were too focused on the whole world-ending thing to worry about much sleep.  And then the night before _that_ …yeah, okay, it’s been some time, and now that Cas mentions it, Dean is aware of the exhaustion that is desperately clawing at him.  He’s been utterly ignoring it up until to now, the adrenaline of saving the world and fearing for Sam’s life enough to keep it all at bay.  Now, though, as he performs a quick self-assessment that is all-too-familiar after years of pushing himself to the very limits of endurance, he recognizes that he’s running on fumes. 

And he’s not the only one who notices. 

“I will take over driving when we stop in Butte,” Cas says, “I am recovered enough that—“

“No, it’s fine,” Dean says, breaking in, “I’m in the zone, you should get more rest, banishing really takes a lot out of—“

“That was not a question,” Cas tells him flatly.  “You are no use to Sam or anyone else if you kill yourself driving into a tree.”

“Eh, I’d just get brought back.  Turns out I know a guy.”

“Humor will not distract me.  When we stop for gas, I will drive.  You will sleep.” 

Cas’s voice has deepened with authority.  He is not asking or suggesting or recommending.  He is half issuing an order and half making a simple statement of fact.  Something about it unsettles Dean.  It rubs him the wrong way, yeah, because nobody fucking tells Dean Winchester what to do—but that’s not the discomfiting part.  The part that’s making him uneasy is how much he wants to just go with it, to defer to the command in Cas’s voice, to let someone else—to let _Cas—_ take over and handle it.  Handle _him._ He wants to not have to be the one taking the lead, just for a little while, just for a minute, just for long enough to get his fucking feet under him.

But that’s not something he can—that’s not—it’s just not a good idea.  Not right now.  Not with everything that’s at stake at the moment, and not with everything that sits unspoken between them. 

“No, Cas, seriously, I—“

“I can put you to sleep with a single touch if I must, Dean.  Do not force my hand.”

Dean’s temper flares at this.  Who the fuck does Cas think he is?  “Oh, you know what, fuck you, Cas.”

“You are far too tired for that,” Cas retorts, “ask me again later when you’ve actually slept.” 

And then all of the air is sucked out of the car as they both freeze solid. 

It was nothing, a simple quip, the kind of effortless obnoxious back-and-forth banter that Cas has witnessed between Dean and Sam for years, that he has participated in himself in more recent times—but also not at all.  It’s…well, Dean guesses it’s a little bit more like what happens when effortless banter accidentally steps on a landmine and blows its own legs off.

“Dean,” Cas says, voice a little strangled, “I—“

Dean cannot let him finish that sentence.  Absolutely cannot.  He cannot allow Cas to say something that will serve as open acknowledgement (whether explicit or not) of what he is resolutely not talking about, thinking about, or remembering.  “I’ll sleep,” Dean says gruffly, “you can drive.”

“I—“

“Another twenty miles or so till Butte.”

From the corner of his eye, Dean can see that Cas is still looking as though he desperately wants to say something, wants to find a way to pull his careless words back into his head, to unmake them altogether. 

Dean should say something first.  Should reassure Cas that it wasn’t—it’s not a big deal.  That Dean knows he didn’t mean—that he wasn’t—that it’s okay.

But it’s not.

So he doesn’t.

Instead, he reaches out and flips on the radio, letting the sound of some early morning Bumblefuck, America, Jesus Freak station fill the car.

“And all you have to do,” some lady is intoning rapturously, “is give your troubles over to the Lord.  Let His blood wash you clean of your sins.  He’s with you, and if you let Him, He’ll take the weight of your sorrows from your shoulders.  Let God and His angels in, and—“

Dean flips the radio right the fuck back off.

There are a few moments of silence before a muffled sound comes from the passenger seat.  Dean glances over and sees Cas covering his mouth with one hand.  Shit, is he _crying?_

No.  No, as it turns out, he’s not.  A closer look (and the sound of a soft snort) convinces Dean that Cas is actually barely managing to contain his laughter.

He stares at Cas for a moment, pretty sure his face reflects the approximate level of What-The-Fuck he is feeling, but when the angel finally turns to face him and Dean can see the horrible, grim humor etched on his face...well, it makes a little more sense.

Sometimes, what the fuck can you really do but laugh?

So he does.  Dean goes right ahead and joins in, letting his shoulders shake, first softly and then harder, at the notion that God has ever actually taken the weight of sorrows from _anyone’s_ fucking shoulders, or that letting him—or his angels, for that matter—in has ever made anybody’s life _less_ complicated. 

The car speeds down the road, silence broken by their shared laughter, and if the sound has more than just a hint of hysteria in it, if there’s more than a touch of instability lurking underneath the hilarity—well, who the fuck can blame them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, gang. Mea culpa. Y'all had to wait a really long damn time for this chapter, I know. I didn't anticipate the gap between updates ever getting this long, but that's what happens when you have too many projects on your plate. Over the last month in particular, I've had to do a lot of traveling that has cut down on my writing time, and my focus has been on the (now nearly finished!!) DCBB that [Dangerousnotbroken](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Dangerousnotbroken/pseuds/Dangerousnotbroken) and I are co-writing. The draft of that is due August 15th, and once it's out of our hands I'll be down to two active projects (and a stack of other I'll-get-to-you-when-I-cans). That should help speed the updates on this one.
> 
> If I had to estimate I'd guess you'll likely see the next update in less than two weeks, but don't hold me to it. Whenever it may be, I promise there's plenty more pain coming.
> 
> For those of you reading along with my other WIP, [Down to Size](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6921097), I expect you will see another chapter of that within the next couple weeks as well. And feel free to come harass me on [tumblr](http://kreweofimp.tumblr.com) about either of these stories, cause a little extra motivation never hurts.


	4. Cause to Grieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't matter how many times he sees it; Dean will never get used to the sight of Sam's blood spilled all over the floor.

How many times?  How many fucking times has Dean shown up somewhere Sam is supposed to be, only to discover no sign of his little brother apart from Sam’s drying blood?

The answer, Dean’s pretty sure, is too goddamn many.  He can’t really say more specifically than that, partly because it’s not really the kind of thing you keep track of and partly because he’s always had bigger fish to fry in these moments than worrying about the frequency with which this shit seems to happen to them. 

He wishes he could say he’s surprised when he shoulders his way through the bunker’s heavy door to find the place deserted.

He wishes he didn’t have to be fucking _relieved_ that it’s only Sam’s blood on the floor and not his body.  Kidnapped is no fucking picnic, they all have good reason to know it by now, but it’s a damn sight better and more readily fixable than dead.

As for the blood—there’s a lot of it.  Nowhere near enough to be mortal on blood loss alone, but enough to suggest a serious injury.  On a scale of nicked yourself shaving to arterial spray, this falls somewhere in the middle, maybe a little further toward the scary end of the spectrum.   And yeah, it could theoretically be the unknown blonde lady’s blood, but it’s not.  Dean knows it’s not, because Sam is gone and the smears of blood across the floor suggest that something very heavy—a hell of a lot heavier than a slim (according to what Cas remembers) woman—was dragged to the stairs. 

So right off the bat, without even having to think about it, Dean knows a number of useful things.

Sam has been taken against his will and he’s injured—probably badly, but he’s alive.  _(Or,_ that loathsome little voice in his head whispers, _he was when they took him.  It’s been hours now, though.  Maybe they got whatever they needed from him and finished the job.  Maybe he’s just so much rotting meat.)_ Dean beats back that wretched voice, shoves it viciously away.  He’s always been pretty good at ignoring its insidious hiss and he’s gotten a hell of a lot better at it in the past several months.  He’s had to.  A simple matter of survival.  When you’ve been _(don’t talk about don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ —the point is, he had to learn how to shut those whispers down, and he does so now as brutally and efficiently as ever.

Once that’s accomplished, he forces himself to focus again, to go through the things he knows.  Sam has been taken against his will.  He’s injured, but alive.  A blonde lady Cas has never seen before took him, and she had help.  There’s no way she could’ve carried Sam out of here alone.  Whoever they were—this woman and her accomplices—they know about the existence of the supernatural.  They know about angels—not just that they exist, but how to banish them. They know about the bunker, where it is and how to get inside.  They knew that when Sam and Dean (Dean has to assume they were gunning for both Winchesters; they couldn’t possibly have known the specifics of the plan to foil Amara) returned, they would likely be accompanied by an angel. 

That’s no small amount of information, but it still doesn’t tell Dean what he needs to know most urgently—who they _are._ Dean needs to know who they are, because that’s the information that will guide him to _where_ they are, and ultimately allow him to get Sam back, ideally while making the mystery kidnappers wish their fucking _grandparents_ had never been born.

They’ve been inside the bunker for under a minute at this point, and when Dean turns to tell Cas what he’s put together, he finds that Cas is crouched next to the burned out remnants of the banishing sigil, brows knitted together as he stares at it.

“What?” Dean demands.

“The sigil,” Cas tells him, “it’s…different.  Only slightly, but the design is altered.  Obviously it was no less effective, but this is not a version of it I’ve seen before, and that—“

“—is some damn good information.  Gives us a jumping off point, maybe.  Do you—“

“That’s not all,” Cas interrupts.  “I have—remembered something.  A detail.  A small one, but—“

“Stop hedging and tell me,” Dean cuts him off, his voice coming out harsher than he intends it to.  He grimaces a little but before he can mutter an apology, Cas’s face hardens slightly.  Dean recognizes the look of someone putting on a mask of protection, and as much as he despises the fact that Cas should need that mask against _him_ of all people, something stays his voice.  It’s for the best, he tells himself.  The more…distance they can maintain from one another while they work this case, the better.  There’s already too many things going unsaid, unacknowledged, unaddressed.  Better for both of them if they can somehow set all emotion aside, because this isn’t just a case, this is _Sam._

“The woman,” Cas says, turning back toward the burnt out sigil and gazing down at it.  Dean has the sense that it’s mostly an excuse for Cas not to look at him, and honestly, that’s also for the best, even if it maybe stings just a little.  Dean bites that down as Cas goes on.  “She spoke, just before she banished me.  Nothing of substance, she said hello twice, but she spoke in a British accent.”

Dean huffs out a startled breath.  “Shit, Cas, that’s—that’s _huge._ It gives us a jumping off point to try to figure out who the fuck she is.”  His gaze follows Cas’s to the sigil, and he grunts in frustration.  “If only activating the goddamn sigil didn’t burn it out, we’d have an even better lead.”

At this, Cas turns back toward Dean, frowning in confusion.  “How would—“

“Blood,” Dean tells him simply.  “She had to use her own blood to make that thing, but there’s nothing left of it but scorch-marks now.  No way to get DNA out of what’s left of a banishing sigil.”

“Perhaps not,” Cas says, his lips quirking up in what sure as shit looks like the barest hint of a smile, “but how about out of these?”  He takes a step back and points at the floor just beneath the sigil, several inches away from the wall.  A moment later, Dean’s eyes settle on what Cas is indicating.

Five or six small round rust-colored droplets, long-since dried, stain the floor.

 _“Yes,”_ Dean hisses.  _Finally,_ they’ve caught a break.  It has to be the bitch’s blood, allowed to carelessly drip on the floor as she lay in wait.  Dean doesn’t know or care why she was too stupid to clean up after herself—probably Sam told her that Dean was dead, so they saw no need to guard against the possibility of him coming back and going all Liam Neeson on them.  “Good catch, Cas.”

He doesn’t miss the way Cas’s face brightens at the praise for just a split second before going neutral once more, but he doesn’t have time to spare for the angel’s feelings or their fucked up mess of a relationship right now.  Not when they’ve got a damn solid lead that needs following.

Dean’s already digging in his pocket for his cell phone.  Time to call in a favor or two.

~*~

Ninety minutes.  An hour and a half.  That’s how fast DNA can be tested these days.  Technology is really something else.

It’s even better when you can get access to it.

There’s not much in the way of crime in a town Lebanon’s size (as of the 2010 census, the official population inside the town limits was 218), so their police department isn’t exactly state of the art.  Mostly because it doesn’t actually exist.  And even if they had one, Dean and Sam long ago established a don’t-shit-where-you-eat policy.  They don’t engage in the kind of sketchy shit that is their stock-in-trade that close to the bunker.  They’ve never been willing to potentially compromise their safe haven by making themselves wanted criminals this close to home.

Dean would definitely be willing to tell that particular policy to take a flying leap under the current circumstances, but there’s no point.  No place in Lebanon has access to the kind of technology that will give them results as quickly as they need.  No place anywhere nearby does.  Hell, the entire county has a population under 4000.  The nearest city with a decent-sized police department is Lincoln, Nebraska, and that’s a three-hour drive.

If Cas had his wings, everything would be so much easier.  If Cas only had his fucking wings, they could—but no.  It’d be too easy to walk down that particular road.  To blame Cas for something that isn’t his fault, no matter what role he may have played in the whole debacle.  Way too fucking easy to turn his frustration and fury on the angel currently hovering awkwardly somewhere behind him.

Dean has more than enough frustration and fury to go around, after all.  Sam is in the wind, definitely injured and probably shot (Dean is assuming, what with the spent bullet casing they found), and could be pretty much anywhere by now.  The best lead they’ve got is gonna take at least a couple days, probably more, to follow.  Not because it absolutely has to but because their resources are woefully inadequate to make things happen as fast as they theoretically could.

Dean’s fake badges and credentials are good enough to sell the local police in various locales, but definitely not sufficient to pass more than perfunctorily among the actual feds.  So instead he’s stuck calling in favors among other hunters and some old contacts of Charlie’s, and those particular wheels move slow.

So—yes.  Frustration and fury aren’t things he lacks, and it would be dangerously simple to turn the weight of both on Cas.  Dangerously simple.  Both dangerous and simple.

Simple because he’s here.  He’s right in front of Dean, and there’s an argument to be made (if a shitty, unfair one) that it really is his fault that they can’t make this shit happen fast.  If not for the angels falling, Cas would still have his wings, and if not for Cas, the angels wouldn’t have fallen.

Dangerous because the second Dean turns the weight of blame onto Cas, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop.  The moment he really lets himself blame Cas for _anything_ is the moment all the walls he’s built up, all the careful fictions he’s constructed, all the self-delusions and mental gymnastics he’s been engaging in—it’s the moment it all comes crashing down around Dean.  It’ll be the moment he finds himself standing face-to-face with something he is not ready to look at.

And that’s the moment that whatever sad excuse for himself Dean has managed to cobble back together with safety pins, spit, and sheer stubbornness, crumbles into dust.  It’s the moment _everything_ falls apart.

So—yet another rule for himself.  Yet another restriction to add to the many.  Yet another thing Dean mustn’t do, another thought he mustn’t think, another place he mustn’t go.  What’s one more, really?

One of these days, the knots he is twisting himself into in the attempt to avoid facing the _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ are going to become just a little too elaborate and it’s all going to unravel around him.  One of these days, he’s going to turn to run away from it and find that he’s blocked off all of his own exits.  Dean knows this.  On some level, he knows this.

It just can’t be today.

Because _Sam._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, y'all. These chapters are coming out a hell of a lot slower than I would have liked. Part of that is that I broke my foot about a week after posting the last chapter, and pain meds and pain kept me too busy to write for a time there.
> 
> This chapter is pretty short, probably shorter than intended, but it was time for me to let it go--and for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure I've figured out what was holding me back on writing this. I was getting too bogged down in the "case," and while this fic is a lot of things, it is *not* a casefic. I have yet to test the theory that this has been the problem, but I think it'll be smoother sailing from here.
> 
> Well. Smoother sailing for me, anyway, on writing it. Y'all should probably just accept that the forecast for the foreseeable future is rough waters.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me and the boys. Their story deserves to be told, even if the process of getting there is challenging and slow.


	5. Prisoners on a Fence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stuck alone together where _it_ happened. For weeks. Is it any wonder things got bad?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one hurts, y'all (yeah, yeah, I know, they all hurt). I recommend snagging a snuggly pet or a stuffed animal and some chocolate.
> 
> And, um, happy Destiel Day, I guess? Our boys met eight years ago today. Here, let's celebrate it with some pain!

_Three Weeks Later_

“Careful,” Dean cautions, hopping up from his seat at the long table in the library to hurry to Sam’s side, “you’re still a little wobbly.  How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay, Mom, you can ease up on the hovering,” Sam tells him good-naturedly, allowing Dean to help him to a chair.  “It’s not like both of us haven’t been shot before, you know.  Not to mention the part where Cas healed me.”

“Whatever.  Healed or not, you spent a couple weeks chained to a wall getting your ass kicked repeatedly, and you just slept for like 19 hours.  I stand by my point; you’re a little wobbly.”

“Forget John and Mary Winchester, you’re like the offspring of a mother hen and a lumberjack.”

“A lumberja—that doesn’t even—forget it, you’re trying to distract me.”

“The flannel, dude.    A lumberjack because of the flannel.”

“You wear flannel too!” Dean accuses, aware that he’s both allowing Sam to distract him and getting bizarrely defensive of his fashion choices.

“Well, sure.  We are brothers after all.  Nobody’s saying my parentage doesn’t also include a lumberjack.”

“Yeah, a lumberjack and an encyclopedia.”

“If you’re trying to insult me, insinuating I know everything is a lousy way to do it.”

Dean is brought up short by this.  Sam may have a point, there.  He’s still trying to settle on an appropriate comeback when the entire conversation is made obsolete by Dean’s own personal perpetual elephant in the room stepping through the doorway. 

“Ah, Sam,” Cas says, lips quirking up in a smile that is tiny but no less warm for it before concern creases his face, “you are up.  Are you certain you should be out of bed?  How are you feeling?”

Dean can _feel_ Sam’s eyes rolling even before he looks from Cas back to him.  “He’s fine,” Dean says, voice heavily layered with sarcasm, “and is highly offended at the suggestion that being shot, tortured, and restrained for weeks might have any kind of lingering effects.”

Sam goes ahead and rolls his eyes again, even more ostentatiously.  “Mom over there notwithstanding, I really do feel fine,” Sam tells Cas, then snorts and adds, “but thanks for asking, Dad.”

There’s a moment in which the word and all of its implications hover over them, a split second in which Dean can see with perfect prescience the towering inferno of awkward that is about to engulf the precious moments of playful banter.

And then it does.

All three of them freeze solid, the air suddenly sucked out of the room, because if Dean is Mom and Cas is Dad…well.  The implication is practically nonexistent, but it’s enough; a piece of paper can topple an 18-wheeler if it’s already unbalanced.

It was such a small thing, again, a nothing of a throwaway quip, but just like that moment in the car, it emphasizes anew that nothing is safe.  There is no topic, no joke, no easy conversation that is not in some way fraught with danger and ripe for the kind of moments that tear barely scabbed wounds wide open yet again.

There’s a right way to handle this.  A tension-easing wisecrack to be made about Sam being a child, or maybe Cas being a lumberjack.  It’s barely been five seconds since Sam spoke—if Dean is quick enough, he can cut this off at the pass before it grows into yet another brick in the wall between himself and Cas.  He _should_ cut this off at the pass.

He should, but he doesn’t. 

Because as much as every brick, as much as every layer of mortar added to that wall stings, it also feels like safety.  The thicker the barrier between them, the easier it is not to look at the cornerstone of the wall, its very foundation.  The easier it is to forget why it exists in the first place.  The more he is able to stay away from things that can remain buried forever, if Dean has anything to say about it.

So he stays silent, and when Cas turns back toward the entranceway he just came through, Dean lets him go.

“I—forgot,” Cas says lamely, “that I need to—“ He doesn’t finish the sentence, likely in part because he can’t think up a reasonable explanation for such a quick departure, and in part because he knows nobody would believe him anyway.  Leaving the unfinished excuse hanging in the air between them, Cas slips back out of the room.

Dean doesn’t speak up to prevent his exit, but he does turn away.  He doesn’t think he can watch Cas walk away, even if he’s the one who refuses to stop him.

He finds himself clenching his jaw rhythmically in time to the click of Cas’s retreating footsteps, so focused on the fading sound that Sam’s quiet voice actually startles him a little.

“That bad, huh?”  His brother’s tone is gentle, as if Dean rather than he is the one recovering from a terrible ordeal, and he doesn’t have to specify for Dean to know that he’s talking about the whole mess that is Dean and Cas’s ability to interact with each other after _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ —just _after._  

Dean is quick to anger these days, his temper on a hair-trigger.  If he heard even a hint of pity in Sam’s voice, there’s no way he would be able to keep himself from lashing out, but there is none.  Instead, there is naked compassion, and something about it disarms Dean enough that he actually responds.

“It’s not great,” he concedes tiredly.

“I owe you a thank you,” Sam says, motioning Dean toward the chair he vacated to help Sam into the room.  Dean goes ahead and sits, offering a snort in response to Sam’s words.

“Don’t be ridiculous.  What, did you think I was gonna leave you with the Douchebags of Letters?”

“That’s not what I mean.  You spent three weeks working the case side-by-side with Cas.  That—it can’t have been—“ Sam has been picking his words with extreme care, and the fact that even so, he’s struggling to find the ‘right’ ones says something, “I’m sure it hasn’t been easy,” he finishes, his tone saying that he’s well aware that this is a gross understatement.

“It’s—we managed,” Dean says.  He sounds tired.  He _is_ tired.

“Do you…want to tell me about it?” Sam says, and it’s not so much an expression of curiosity as an offer of a listening ear.  Still, there’s plausible deniability here.  Dean can—if he wants to, if he thinks he can manage it—confide in Sam a little, maybe shed some small amount of the weight of the past several weeks, under the guise of filling Sam in on how they worked the case.

“I’m not sure—“ he begins, then stops.  Yeah, he kind of _does_ want to tell Sam about it, but he doesn’t know how to start.

“I already know how you saved the freaking world with your emotional intelligence, which I still say is a whole other level of irony,” Dean snorts but doesn’t argue because, yeah, nobody would ever have predicted that he would end up saving the world via family therapy, “why don’t you tell me what happened after Amara and Chuck were gone.”

Dean takes in a deep breath.  “So,” he says, “I don’t know how it happened exactly, but one minute I’m standing in the garden watching them evaporate and the next, I’m in the middle of the woods in bumblefuck Montana…”

~*~

“…and that’s when Marcus—you remember, he was one of Charlie’s nerd buddies whose information she left us with?—calls back and says he’s got a hit on the DNA results and that the blood belongs to a fucking peer of the realm, no less.”

_“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Dean tells Marcus, incredulity dripping off every word he speaks.  “A fucking Baroness?”_

_“I’m sure. That blood belongs to Lady Antonia Bevell, and she is definitely a Baroness.  I just emailed you a picture and some other info.  I’ll keep digging and see what else I can find.”_

_“Marcus, you’re the best.  We owe you.”_

_“Nah, we’re good.  Charlie got me out of a couple tight spots and I know you guys looked out for her before she—before.”_

_“I—yeah.  We tried.”_

_“Anyway, I’ll call if I come up with anything else big.  Later.”_

_Dean is already turning to his laptop as he crams the phone back into his pocket.  Cas, who has been hovering awkwardly (he seems to be doing a lot of awkward hovering these days) near Dean’s elbow, speaks up almost instantly.  “Marcus has found her?”_

_Dean bites back the urge to say something sarcastic because obviously, Marcus has found her.  He reminds himself that Cas could only hear his half of the conversation, then nods.  “Yeah, we’ve got a hit.  Lady Antonia Bevell, an English Baroness.  Looks like you were right about that accent.  C’mon, Marcus says he emailed a picture, we can confirm it’s the lady you saw.”_

_“I only saw her for a few seconds, Dean, I do not know that I can—“_

_“Don’t stress it, Cas, this is DNA.  It’s airtight, you’ll just be extra confirmation.  I’m sure you remember enough.”   As he speaks, Dean has been pulling up the web browser to log in to his email account.  He spares a glance over his shoulder up at Cas and finds the angel looking at least slightly reassured by Dean’s vote of confidence.  Staunchly ignoring the way his heart clenches a little at how easily a simple word from him can bolster Cas, Dean focuses back on his email.  He finds the message from Marcus immediately and clicks on it, downloading the picture.  It pops up a few seconds later; the woman is in her late fifties or early sixties, her slender form well-groomed and blonde hair perfectly coiffed.  Her features are aristocratic and there is a sharpness to her eyes that makes Dean suspect she might be a force to be reckoned with.  He’s maybe a little surprised at her age—dude, a lady old enough to be a grandma got the drop on Sam?  Dean makes a mental note never to let him live it down once they get him back._

_He’s so focused on trying to take the measure of the woman through her photograph that he actually starts slightly when Cas’s voice breaks out behind him._

_“No,” Cas says flatly.  “That’s not her.”_

_“I—hold up, what?” Dean says, his voice a little sharper than intended._

_“That is not the woman who banished me,” Cas tells him, utter certainty in his voice.  “She is far too old.  The woman who was waiting for us cannot have been older than thirty.”_

_“Cas,” Dean says, aiming for patient and instead sounding kind of patronizing, “you said yourself that you only saw her for a second or two.  You told me she was blonde and slim, and this woman is both.  Maybe you just didn’t get a great look at—“_

_“No,” Cas says insistently, “I am quite sure.  This is not the woman who took Sam.  This is not the woman who was bleeding on our floor.”_

_Dean turns away from the photograph to face Cas head on, trying to control his irrational spike of annoyance.  “Cas,” he says again, then pauses because he doesn’t want to be a complete douchebag, but Jesus Christ, the angel isn’t making it easy, “DNA isn’t exactly fallible.  Marcus verified it.  He checked twice.  The DNA definitely belongs to Lady Antonia Bevell, and—“_

_“Then the woman in the picture is someone else.  Either the DNA results are wrong or the picture is wrong, because this is not the right person.”  Dean isn’t the only one who’s annoyed.  Every time Cas speaks, his voice is a little tighter, a little more defensive._

_“Dude,” Dean says, extending his hands, palms toward Cas, in a gesture that’s meant to be gently quelling and instead just seems dismissive, “take it easy.  You’re not being attacked.  I’m just trying to tell you that you must’ve made some kind of mistake, because—“_

_“And I am trying to tell you that I have done no such thing.  As I was the one who was there, you are in no position to tell me what I saw, Dean.”  Cas is hanging onto his temper by a thread at this point, his voice razor-sharp and his eyes flashing with fury that seems to Dean disproportionate to the issue in question.  He jabs a finger at the photograph on the screen, stalking closer to stand above Dean, whose growing irritation allows him to almost entirely ignore the momentary stab of something that feels disturbingly close to panic at having Cas looming over him.  “This woman is at least twice the age of Sam’s attacker.  Her build is similar and her hair is the same color, yes, but she is_ not the same woman.” 

_“Look, Cas, if I have to choose between believing DNA evidence and believing your split-second glance, I have to—“ He doesn’t have time to finish his thought before the phone is ringing, and it’s probably just as well because Cas is making a sound suspiciously close to a growl.  A quick glance downward confirms that Marcus is calling back.  Dean stabs the speakerphone button as he answers, figuring that whatever reason he’s calling, they can confirm once and for all that Cas has misremembered._

_“Dean,” Marcus says, relief in his voice, “glad I caught you.  Look, disregard everything I sent you.”_

_“You—what, now?” Dean demands, closing his eyes briefly and trying to ignore the sinking sensation in his gut._

_“I screwed up.  Turns out there are two Lady Antonia Bevells.  I sent you the mother’s info but the DNA belongs to the daughter.  You should have the new email with her info in two, three minutes tops.”_

_Goddammit._

_“Oh,” Dean says weakly, “okay, that’s…okay.”_

_“Sorry, man, that’s my bad.”_

_“No, it’s—it’s really not a big—don’t worry about it.”_

_“Anyway, I’m still looking for more details, anything that might be useful, but you’ll have the preliminary email any second.”_

_“Thanks, buddy.”_

_“Anytime,” Marcus says, then disconnects.  Dean exhales very slowly, then turns back toward the computer screen, unable to even glance at Cas.  Fuck, Marcus isn’t the only one who screwed up, and Dean’s fuck-up won’t be quite so easily remedied._

_He can feel the righteous vindication emanating off of Cas for every single one of the interminable thirty seconds it takes for the new email to arrive.  When it dings into his inbox, Dean clicks on it immediately.  Taking in a silent breath, he downloads the new photo._

_This woman is significantly younger—at a guess, she’s somewhere in her late twenties.  She, too, is blonde and slim, and there’s a slight similarity of features that makes it easy to believe that she’s the daughter of the woman Cas so vehemently—and accurately—insisted was the wrong one._

“That,” _Cas hisses, stabbing a finger at the screen, “is the woman who banished me.  But don’t take my word for it.”  There is a kind of viciousness to his tone, but Dean hears the betrayed hurt behind it, and hates himself just a little for causing it.  For not just listening to Cas—which would have been the very least the angel is entitled to at this point._

_“Cas,” Dean says, “I’m sorry, I—“_

_“Save it,” Cas says, shaking his head.  Nonsensically, Dean thinks that’s a colloquialism he must’ve picked up from Dean himself over the years.  Disgust is etched into every line of Castiel’s face as he turns his back on Dean and stalks out of the room._

_Dean watches him go in helpless silence, knowing that there’s something—a thousand somethings—that he should say, and totally unable to figure out what they are._

_Later, it will occur to him that Cas’s anger was disproportionate to the slight, however offensive it may have been.  Later, it will occur to him that Cas is mad about a hell of a lot more than Dean’s skepticism over the pictures.  Later, Dean will realize that he’s not the only one who is so blindingly, unspeakably angry deep down that he cannot let himself anywhere near it for fear of spontaneously combusting._

_Later._

_Right now, all he can do is stare after the billowing trenchcoat as it retreats, an apology that wouldn’t be enough frozen on his lips._

~*~

“Jesus,” Sam says quietly.  “Was it like that the whole time?”

“No,” Dean says hastily, “no, that was probably the worst of it.  After that—I was more careful.  We were both more careful.  I apologized again that night, he accepted it, and we—moved past it.”

Sam’s expression is knowing, but he doesn’t push it, doesn’t push for Dean to tell him more than the bare, factual rendition he’s currently offering.  “Okay,” he says, “what happened next?”

“Once we knew who she was, Cas had the idea of seeing whether there was anything in the archives about her family, since they somehow knew about the bunker.  We had the time while Marcus worked on figuring out where her _ladyship_ had vanished off to.” Dean speaks the title with an impressively derisive sneer, the fact that he personally put a bullet in the back of her head and burned her centuries-old manor to the ground doing nothing to diminish his loathing for the self-important, priggish bitch.  “It took damn near a week of digging, but that’s how we figured out that she was a legacy, too.  That her whole family were legacies.  We got secondary confirmation that it was a Men of Letters thing when we found records detailing the creation of the modified banishing sigil.  Took them months of experimentation using a captured angel.  Anyway, from there it came together pretty quickly…”

~*~

_“England?” Dean demands of Marcus, “you’re sure?”_

_“Positive.  She flew from Lincoln, Nebraska to London on a private jet the night of May 25 th.”_

_“Fuck me,” Dean groans.  “I don’t suppose you know any fast way to get to the UK that doesn’t involve flying?”_

_“Sorry, man,” Marcus chuckles, “teleport’s on the fritz.  You got my email with the info about her manor? They’ve got a hell of a lot of land, lots of outbuildings.  If she wanted to hide something, it’d be pretty easy.  You said she stole something of yours, yeah?  Something important?”_

_“Yeah, that’s—yeah.”_

_“Lots of places to hide it on an estate.  More than that, I couldn’t tell you, but if you come up with anything else I can help out with—“_

_“I’ll call,” Dean says, “and thanks again.  Seriously.  You ever need anything, don’t hesitate.”_

_“Better believe it,” Marcus jokes, “pretty sure I own you now.”_

_“I’d get a refund,” Dean advises, actually cracking half a grin, “or trade in for a better model.  If I’m what you got out of the deal, you definitely got cheated.”_

_“Wouldn’t be the first time.  Good luck, Dean.”_

_Dean hangs up the call and immediately makes another one.  They’ve never needed to travel internationally with Cas since the fall.  He doesn’t have a passport, and as much as a tiny part of Dean is tempted to use that as an excuse to jet off to England without Cas (a week and a half of this hair-trigger tension between them is killing him), there’s no way in hell the angel would let him walk into a situation as volatile—and with as many question marks—as this one without back-up.  Hell, Dean wouldn’t go in without back-up unless he had literally no other choice._

_Which means, yet again, his personal feelings have to be set aside in the name of necessity.  In the name of_ Sam.  _And nothing is more important than Sam._

_Anything could be happening to him.  Anything.  They were willing to neutralize him with a bullet in order to kidnap him, so Dean has to assume they’re not above pretty much any other horrifically violent thing he can imagine._

_Honestly, if it weren’t for Sam—if it weren’t for the crushing weight of mind-numbing terror for Sammy, Dean thinks he might’ve gone around the bend days ago.  Stuck in the bunker with Cas and only Cas, crammed in like sardines (yeah, the bunker’s pretty big, big enough that theoretically they should rattle around in here, but it’s never felt smaller), carefully picking every word, every glance, every gesture—it’s a goddamn nightmare.  He’s spent the past week and a half picking his way painstakingly through an endless field of landmines, desperately hoping with each step he doesn’t get blown to kingdom come._

_Alone in the bunker with Cas.  And only Cas.  It is taking everything Dean has not to look directly at what happened the last time he was alone in the bunker with “Cas.”  It is taking everything he has not to hit the ceiling every time the angel’s gravelly voice rings out at his back.  It is taking everything he has not to just give in and lose himself in_ (don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it).

 _It’s fucking exhausting, is what it is, and Sam is the only thing keeping him going.  Sam is the last thing he thinks about as he finally topples into bed each night, the first thing he thinks about when his alarm blares a scant few hours later and drags him into a new day.  He just has to rescue Sam and then he and Cas can—they can—fuck, Dean doesn’t have a goddamn clue what they can do.  What they_ will _do.  Get as far away from each other as it’s possible to be without leaving the planet?  Actually sit down and talk things through?  Wear flower crowns and sing kumba-fucking-ya?  Whatever their next course of action, it’ll have to wait._

 _Because_ Sam. 

_~*~_

_Dean’s contact confirms what he already knows: it’s going to take a couple days to get a travel-ready fake passport for Cas.  More time ticking away, more time in which anything could be happening to Sam._

_If only Cas had his fucking_ wings.  _If only._

_“Passport should be ready tomorrow morning,” Dean tells Cas as he gets off the phone a day and a half later, rising from the long table in the library, “and my contact in the UK is going to have weapons and other equipment ready and waiting for us when we land.  Flight leaves early afternoon.”_

_“Dean,” Cas says, and Dean can tell he’s about to try again, “if you would just let me—“_

_“No!” Dean snaps, voice so merciless it’s practically vicious, “I’ve told you,_ no.  _I need to be sharp.”_

_“That is exactly my point,” Cas says, the patience in his voice stretched thinner than a rubber band the second before it snaps in two, “you need to be sharp.  You have not slept more than three hours at a time in over two weeks.  You are running on fumes.  If you let me put you to sleep, you could get a solid nine or ten hours before we need to pick up the passport.  You desperately need rest.  I can—”_

_“Leave it, Cas,” Dean says, the warning in his tone clearer than a flashing neon sign._

_“Just let me help you!” Cas finally cries, his fingers curling into fists.  It’s a gesture of frustration, not a sign of imminent violence; Dean knows what those look like._

_Still, for half a second Dean gets a quick flash of those same fingers tightening into a fist in this same room.  Only that time, the other hand was curled into Dean’s flannel shirt, holding him steady for the bone-crunching blows to follow.  Dean’s heart, which wasn’t especially slow before, suddenly kicks into triple-time, ready to pound out of his chest.  He works to control his reactions, but he can’t quite suppress a flinch, and that makes him madder than he already was.  Goddammit, he is not going to let this get the better of him_ (it already has), _he is not._

 _“You are out of your fucking mind if you think for a second there’s any way I’m going to let you—“ Dean is shouting before he realizes that he’s opened his mouth, and he just barely manages to snap his lips together before it’s too late.  Before he says what he hasn’t even admitted to himself that he’s thinking.  That he can’t let it happen because on some deep-down, primal level he has no control of, the idea of being alone in the bunker with Cas, helpless and insensible, is fucking_ terrifying.  _The idea that anything could be happening to him, anything could be_ done _to him—it makes Dean want to claw his way out of his own skin._

 _He knows on a logical level, he_ knows _that he is safe with Cas.  He does.  He knows this.  But his instincts don’t seem to have gotten that memo, because they are shrieking desperate warnings._

_Before Cas can prompt him to go on, Dean whirls, storming out of the room and down the hall toward his bedroom.  He doesn’t even register that Cas is at his heels until he reaches the bedroom door, turns to close it, and finds himself nose-to-nose with the angel._

_Again, his voice gets ahead of his mind._

_“No!” Dean cries, practically a yelp_ , _which is horrifying on its own level.  “Don’t you come in here!”  He can’t.  He can’t he can’t he can’t.  No.  The last time he was in here—the last time—it_ (don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it). _He can’t._

 _Cas freezes at the threshold, eyes widening, and Dean can see the moment in which his brain makes the connection.  The moment in which he remembers that he hasn’t been inside Dean’s room since_ (don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it).  _Cas’s expression shatters into a million pieces and remakes itself into something so heart-wrenchingly broken that it feels like a dagger through Dean’s heart.  In the momentary stillness, Dean’s voice emerges unbidden once more.  “Please,” he whispers, “Cas, please.  Don’t.”_

 _“I—” Cas breaks off.  Swallows hard.  His eyes dart around Dean’s room, and Dean can_ see _him remembering.  It’s too close—too immediate.  If he has to watch Cas relive it, there’s no way he can keep himself from_ (don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it), _so he does the only thing he can._

_He swings the door shut in Cas’s face, listening to the quiet click as the latch engages._

_And then he locks it._

_~*~_

_Dean lies in bed for hours that night staring at the ceiling, muscles drawn tight as bow strings, his mantra on repeat in his head._

Don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it

_It almost works._

_~*~_

“I thought you said,” Sam says quietly, appalled, “that the picture thing was as bad as it got.”

“I lied,” Dean says hollowly.  “What did you want me to say?  That we barely made it?  That I’m not sure how—hell, _if—_ either of us is still sane?”

“Dean, I’m sorry, I didn’t think about—that it was the first time you guys had been alone in the bunker since—“

“I’m gonna get a beer,” Dean says abruptly, rising from his chair, “none for you, though, you’re still a little wobbly.  Anyway, you know most of the rest of it.  We flew there, we found the estate, we did recon, we figured out where they were holding you, and we went in.  That’s—that’s it.”

“Dean,” Sam says, voice quiet and too compassionate.  Dean doesn’t know what he’s going to say exactly, all he knows is that he can’t hear it.

“Sam, it’s fine,” he says.  “Look, you’re home, you’re gonna be fine.  Now we can all just…take a break, take a breather, get our feet under us.  It’s been nonstop for fucking months now.  We all just need a rest.”

“Are you sure you—“

“I’m sure,” Dean tells him with a bravado he doesn’t feel.  “Seriously.  It was bad, yeah, but we were both worried as hell about you, I hadn’t been getting enough sleep—it’s gonna be fine now.  Hell, I slept for damn near 12 hours last night while you were passed out.”

“You did?” Sam says, sounding both skeptical and a little encouraged.

“I did,” Dean confirms, quite honestly.  “Amazing what knowing your little brother isn’t being disemboweled will do for your REM cycles.”

Sam snorts and shakes his head, “I’ll give you that one.”

“Seriously.  We all just need some rest,” Dean says, and at least on the surface, he actually kind of believes it.

~*~

The rest of the day passes quietly.  Cas comes back eventually and they all adjourn to the makeshift den with its flat screen and lumpy thrift store couches.  Somehow Dean emerges victorious after a good-natured but vigorous bickering session over movie choices and the three of them watch _Die Hard_ for the millionth or so time.  Cas impressively fails to get even the references that have been explained to him before, which strikes Dean as even funnier than usual.  By the time they all retire to their respective rooms for some sleep, Dean’s actually feeling something resembling hopeful for the first time in a long damn time.

That night, the nightmares start.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Here, have a new chapter in less than a week. Looks like I was right about what had been holding me back.
> 
> I'm gonna try to make something happen with my other WIP at the moment, but in general, I anticipate chapters coming quicker moving forward. We're getting into the meat of things now, and I know exactly what the shape of the narrative looks like from here.
> 
> Hang in there, y'all. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.


	6. The Dreams Came In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Denial isn't quite as effective when you're asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mea culpa, mea culpa. It's been months. I'm so sorry, y'all. I have plenty of excuses and explanations, but instead I'm just going to let the chapter speak for itself.
> 
> And, um, sorry about all this.
> 
> PLEASE watch for shifting tags.

_“Hey there, champ,” says the voice that should be Cas but isn’t, and Dean is on his feet, chair knocked almost into the wall by the force with which he rose._

_“Easy, little fella, easy!  You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Dean.  Now, why could that be?”_

_He is mocking Dean. Lucifer is mocking him, and Dean doesn’t know what’s going to happen, doesn’t know how he’s going to be fooled, doesn’t yet know that he’s going to roll over for the Devil.  He doesn’t know any of this yet.  He will soon, but not yet.  The spark of defiance in him has not yet been snuffed out, and so Dean flips Lucifer the bird._

_Somehow he is in the moment and he is watching it simultaneously.  He feels his breath coming hard and fast, feels his muscles move to accommodate the order from his brain to lift that single finger at Lucifer.  All of this he does, all of this he feels, but at the same time he is watching from above as the scene plays out, experiencing it as both observer and participant.  It was bad enough to be in the moment, but seeing it happen, watching it unfold in front of him, knowing exactly how it will go down, but being incapable of stopping it?_

_That is so very much worse._

_More is supposed to happen now, Dean’s sure of it.  There’s more banter, there’s more conversation, there’s more taunting, but time is apparently no longer subject to its own laws and the scene effortlessly skips.  Suddenly Dean is on his knees, and his body is battered and broken.  His ribs are shattered, his lung is punctured, he is missing teeth, his cheekbone is fractured, his arm hangs at an unnatural angle.  He’s not entirely sure how he’s still conscious, and the taste of his own blood, thick and heavy and cloying, is in his mouth, the smell of it in his nose._

_He hears himself pleading, hears his own shameful begging as he tries to draw out the seraph, the other occupant inside the body that is beating the seven shades of shit out of him.  He hears the desperation in his tone as he tries to use the power of what they feel for each other—however unspoken it has gone—to anchor his beloved (in this moment he cannot lie to himself, no matter how much he would like to, and yes, he loves Cas, of course he does, he has for years now) in the vessel that is meant to be his.  Dean hears it all, he sees it all, even as he feels the words spill out of his own swollen mouth._

_And it is terrible, all of it, but it is so much worse when the body before him shakes, when it falls to its knees, when the lie really begins._

_The father of lies, they call him, and Sam said that Lucifer swore never to lie to him and never really broke that promise, but he made no such vow to Dean.  The father of lies, and he told the mother of all lies, perpetuated it with his words and his tone and his body and Dean believed it.   He swallowed it all down greedily, wanting it to be real so badly that he ignored every hint of wrongness, every not-quite-right thing._

_He feels the excessive heat flood his body when still-not-Cas heals him, when his grievous wounds go away, and that, right there, right at the beginning.  That should have been enough.  Cas has healed him a hundred times, a thousand times, and it never felt like that.  It was the first wrongness but not the last, and ultimately, as he has always known, Dean has only himself to blame.  Lucifer may be the best liar on the planet, but nobody knows Cas the way Dean does, and_ how could he not have known?

_He knows what is coming next, knows that it only gets worse from here even though he will not shed another drop of blood this day, even though no more harsh hands will be laid on his body.  Something much worse is coming; the gentle touches, the caresses, the things that Dean did not just permit but invited.  The worst kind of violation, except can it even be called a violation at all if he allowed it, if he begged for it?_

_Those familiar chapped lips collide with Dean’s and even though he knows, even though he_ knows, _it still feels right, because the Dean who is kissing not-Cas still believes that it is Cas, even though the Dean that is watching from aloft knows the truth.  He hates it and loves it at the same time and the force of his own horror is so strong, so overwhelming, the negation in every fiber of the incorporeal Dean that hovers over the action so all-consuming that it rips him wholesale from the horror he never asked to relive._

~*~

 _“NO!”_ He comes awake with a shout, with the single word he never spoke to the angel who was not Cas (not until much too late) on his lips. 

He is sitting bolt upright in bed, the sheets a tangled mess around him, soaked with his own sweat.  His boxers and t-shirt are practically sopping, and the last time he sweated this much in his sleep, he had the flu.  No virus or bacteria pervades his system now, but that doesn’t stop Dean from feeling ill.  That doesn’t stop the roiling nausea or how cold he feels, cold enough that a fine tremor starts up almost immediately, ramping up until he is shivering hard enough that his teeth clack together.  He may not be sick in the traditional sense, but Dean is most assuredly not well.

Most of the time, in the daylight, as he goes about his business, he can keep it at bay.  He can repress it.  He can push it away, and anytime it tries to rise to the surface, he can break out that mantra, that verbal totem _(don’t think about it don’t talk about it don’t remember it)_ that he clings to like a security blanket.

It’s not healthy, maybe.  Definitely.  On some level he knows this.  On some level he is aware that some things simply will not stay buried forever.  On some level he is aware that he is barely holding on, that he is dangerously close to total psychological collapse at any given moment, albeit some more than others.  Mostly, he manages to repress that knowledge too.  Mostly, he is willing—determined—to continue to lie to himself, to live in his own denial.  Nothing is real here, maybe, but is that such a steep price to pay when reality slices so deep, hurts so badly?

Most of the time, he can keep it at bay.

Not now.

Not when his own sleeping mind has betrayed him, has dragged him back to a place he vowed never to visit again, never to think about, never to look directly at.  It is right there, right in front of him, as sharp and clear and real as the empty room around him, as if Lucifer threw his last barb and finally walked out the door just moments ago, and not months.

He forces it back, tries to push it away, tries to quell the rising tide of memories that threaten to drag him under, but being here, in this room, on this bed, is not helping.

The frigid sweat on his skin is only making him colder, and the dream is still so real, so immediate, that he can still feel the drying blood on his skin and the brush of soft, chapped lips against his own.

He has to—do something.  Get out.  The clock on his bedside table reads 3:18 AM, and the rest of the bunker is silent.  Sam is no doubt asleep in his room.  Cas will be reading in the library, or on his laptop in his own room, or out of the bunker altogether.  He often leaves at night.  Dean has never asked where he goes.  Half of him doesn’t want to know; the other half doesn’t feel he has the right.

The decision isn’t a conscious one, but he finds himself on his feet moments later, his sweat-soaked, sour-smelling clothing discarded on the floor, and it’s better but also worse because now he is naked, and even though he is alone he cannot be vulnerable like that.

He wraps himself in the plush robe and allows his feet to carry him down the hall to the shower.  Hot water, rinsing away the echoes of the dream and the stink of sour sweat.  This is what he needs.  This is the way to settle himself back toward rest, maybe even toward sleep, although the idea of that is almost ludicrous with adrenaline still pumping through his veins.

Perhaps it would have been a good decision, a safe way to extricate himself from the reality of _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ except that he has forgotten one small detail.  Dean has forgotten what he did in the aftermath of _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)._ He has forgotten that this was his first refuge.

He remembers too late, as he stands underneath the slightly too-hot water, as it pounds down on his head and rushes over his body, and suddenly he is _back there._ Time twists on itself and it is minutes and not months since Lucifer left him alone, and it isn’t sleep-sweat he is rinsing off himself but the stink of sex and the trickle of the Devil’s seed as it drips languidly from his aching ass.  He is shaking not because of memory but from immediate response to a trauma that he is _still living,_ and when he hits his knees he doesn’t even register the sharp pain that reverberates through his legs from the impact.

It’s not his first flashback but it’s by far the most immersive.  The others have lasted no more than a second, two or three at most.  This one?  This goes on and on, and it’s not until he begins to finally climb back into the now that he discovers his skin has been scrubbed raw and red once more, just as in the wake of the _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)._ He is shuddering with sobs that he doesn’t remember beginning, his body wracked with the force of grief and shame and guilt that he cannot face, that he cannot deal with, that he cannot allow himself the luxury of working through.

And maybe, if he were another person, if this were another place, if he had lived a different life, this would be the point at which the dam truly broke.  This would be the point at which he finally admitted to himself and to the people he loves just how damaged he really is.  Maybe this would be the point that he finally opened up, asked for help, reached out for the support that is just waiting for him to take advantage of it.

But he isn’t that person.  This isn’t that place.  He is Dean Winchester, and this is his safe haven no longer, and his entire life has pounded into him the message that traumas are a dime a dozen and only civilians and pussies have the luxury of actually _being_ traumatized.  Winchesters pick up and move on.  They pick themselves the fuck up, and they move the fuck on, because that’s how it has to be.

That is the world that he lives in.  That is the person he is.

Dean Winchester climbs slowly to his feet, shuts off the cooling water, dries himself off (stifling a wince at the way even the soft towel stings against his scrubbed raw skin), wraps himself in his robe, and pads down the hallway to change his sheets.

He never does get back to sleep.

~*~

If Sam notices the shiny redness of Dean’s skin the next day, he doesn’t mention it, but his eyes follow Dean a little more closely, the ever-present concern in them a little nearer to the surface.  Dean pretends he doesn’t see it, as always, speaking extra loud, gesturing extra expansively, cracking extra corny jokes.  He pretends not to see the haunted look in Cas’s eyes, pretends not to know that it mirrors his own.  He pretends, and he smiles, and he goes through the motions, because anything else is unthinkable.

By the time he goes to bed that night, he has almost managed to convince himself that the nightmare was an anomaly, a one-time thing sparked by giving Sam the blow-by-blow of the search for him.

He is wrong.

The dream picks up almost where it left off, as if it has just been waiting for Dean to give back in to sleep, as if it has been crouched over him, ready to pounce once more.

He is as helpless to resist it as he was all those months ago.

~*~

_“He…” The fingers that only pretend to belong to Cas are curling and uncurling, as if in pain or desperation. “He wants back out.  He’s fighting me hard.  He doesn’t like being caged, Dean.”_

_Dean speaks words of comfort, tells the beast masquerading as Cas that he believes, that Dean believes in him._

_Dean is a fool and a dupe._

_The Devil groans, and the sound of pain in his voice is so real, so immediate, that even the Dean watching from aloft feels his heart clench for just a moment.  “Dean, it hurts.  He hurts.  He’s clawing at me.  I can feel him.”_

_The Dean kneeling in front of the familiar face does not stand a chance.  Never did.  He wants nothing more than to fix it, to help, to anchor the angel he believes to be Cas into his vessel.  Lucifer knows this.  He plays directly into it.  “Dean, help me.  Please, help me.  Help me hold him back.”_

_Dean draws him in, pulls the warm body close and cradles it tight against himself, holding it up, bolstering it, supporting it.  He believes that he is giving comfort to Cas, and so he does it with his whole heart.  He has always given his whole heart to Cas, whether or not he meant to, whether or not he was aware of it, whether or not it was wise.  When he speaks, this reality drips from every syllable, trickles off of every word, permeates every pause.  “Jesus, Cas, of course.  I want to—tell me how.  Tell me what to do.”_

Tell me what to do.

_And Lucifer does.  Oh, he does.  Not with words, at first.  There are no words when he scrabbles with Dean’s flannel, but the meaning is crystal clear regardless._

_When Dean freezes, shocked, Lucifer freezes as well.  He plays it perfectly.  He plays_ Dean _perfectly.  And Dean sings for him.  Dean sings like the most finely tuned violin, like the most exquisitely trained opera singer._

_“No, Dean.  I can’t—I cannot make you do this.  It is not fair to ask this of you, to ask you to sacrifice this in order to help me fight him back.”_

_Dean will never stop being ashamed that the first time he verbalized this, the first time he spoke words like this, the first time he admitted this to another living creature—the first time he acknowledged this to even_ himself _—it was to Lucifer._

_He could live a thousand years and this would still rank in his top three shameful moments._

_This terrible day owns the other two as well._

_“How is it possible,” Dean says, and this time he goes first, this time he is the initiator, when he starts to divest the angel who is still not Cas, who will never once be Cas, not now, not when it matters, of his trenchcoat, “that an angel of the Lord can be so goddamn blind?  You really think you’re making me do anything?  You think this is a sacrifice?  Jesus, Cas, you think I haven’t been wanting this since the day you backed me against Bobby’s kitchen counter and told me to show you some respect?”_

_And oh, how Lucifer must have laughed internally.  How amused he must have been.  How much glee he must have taken in this admission, in the baring of Dean’s soul.  How effortlessly he was able to draw this from Dean, how easily Dean Winchester, expert hunter, Man of Letters, all-around badass, was manipulated._

_He will force this down when he is awake, will crush it into the back of his mind and flatly refuse to look at it for some long time to come, but there is just a moment here when it occurs to Dean what he is experiencing, as he watches this effortless, masterful manipulation play out.  When it occurs to Dean who else has been through exactly this experience._

_Cas._

_The real Cas._

_He was forced to observe, silent and powerless, as this scene played out before him.  Forced to witness every second, every moment, every heartbeat, every touch, every word.  Bound up tight, threatened and beaten into submission.  Or maybe not yet.  Perhaps Lucifer had not yet mastered him with the threat of murdering Dean.  Perhaps in this moment, Cas was still fighting, still battling to get free, to come back to Dean for real, to stop this miserable farce before it was too late._

_Whatever the case, Cas has been here.  Cas has seen this same thing, watched just as helplessly as something he could not stop played out._

_For just a heartbeat, the Dean that must watch this, that cannot turn away, that cannot stop it, that cannot do anything but see it unfold before him—for just a heartbeat, he is overcome by compassion.  His heart aches, not for himself, but for Castiel.  For his pain, for his rage, for his loss, as he watched Lucifer easily manipulate his way into taking what should have been his.  What was rightfully his.  What never would be his—not now.  Not after._

_For just that moment, Dean feels for Cas as he has never felt for anyone._

_And then the heartbeat is past, the moment over, because hands are moving and clothing is dropping and words are being spoken and there is no room for compassion when Dean’s horror is so complete._

_They are laughing at their own clumsiness, and maybe Dean imagines it but he thinks now he hears just a thread of mockery in the laughter that does not belong to Cas.  In the moment, when it was happening, he heard no such thing.  He heard joy, he heard relief, he heard want—but it was little more than his own emotions, masterfully reflected back at him.  No more than a performance by the world’s first and finest virtuoso of lies.  A virtuoso indeed, because what skill it must have taken to navigate these waters until Dean was the one urging him on._

_“Stop.  Just—stop.” Dean tells Lucifer.  “This isn’t about owing.  You’re not coercing me into anything.  When all is said and done, I might need to write Lucifer a thank you note—“ Oh God, the memory of this moment fills him with such shame, undying shame, and the pitch perfect expression of startlement on the face Dean now knows still belonged to Lucifer cuts deep, “—because I might never have gotten up the guts to do this otherwise.  Might have spent forever watching you and wanting you and—“ he’d wanted to say ‘loving you,’ but he hadn’t been able to.  At the time he’d believed himself too cowardly.  Now he wonders if some small part of him knew and held this, just this, back.  Either way, he is grateful.  He is so grateful that this one thing, Lucifer did not get to have, “—and being too much of a goddamn coward to do anything about it.”_

_It's funny—or would be, in another universe in which anything could ever be funny again—but those words are actually true, just not in quite the way Dean thought at the time.  He likely_ would _never have gotten up the courage to say those things, to admit those things.  Lucifer was indeed the impetus behind the admission—but not in a way that brought them closer together.  Those words that should have finally breached the distance between Cas and Dean, the touches that should finally have brought them together in a way that had likely been fated since Cas first laid a hand on him—instead they served as kindling for an inferno that would burn what was between them to the ground.  Instead of standing together, wrapped up in one another at long last, they were left staring at each other across a gaping chasm, surrounded by thousands of miles of burned wasteland._

_Two broken, battered men, no longer able to recognize themselves or one another._

_Dean watches as his own hand slides into Castiel’s boxers to grip Lucifer’s flesh, and wonders briefly if the reverberations of that act, of the ones that followed, shook the very foundation of the universe.  He’s been told that the moment Cas pulled him out of hell was transformative, that all of creation heard the cry that the righteous man was saved.  Perhaps this moment was a little like that, but in reverse.  If heaven cried out in victory when Castiel dragged the smoldering remnants of Dean from the Pit, perhaps it wept in those terrible moments when Lucifer dragged him back to his very own personal hell.  He wonders, just for a moment, if the angels wept.  If God Himself, wherever He was hiding, shed a tear at the destruction of what might have been._

_In the end, he supposes, it doesn’t particularly matter.  Whether heaven wept, whether God noticed at all—none stepped in to stop it.  The only angel who ever really gave a damn was hamstrung, trapped, bound and silenced, unable to save either Dean or himself._

_Castiel saved him from hell once before.  Perhaps it was only fitting that he be the instrument Lucifer used to condemn Dean to his own small and custom-made perdition—one he can never escape, because it’s not a place this time, it’s the very skin he resides in.  The very air that he breathes.  It’s in every corner of his mind and every cell of his body._

_He is his own hell, and this time, there will be no rescue.  Castiel cannot save him now any more than he could in the moments Dean now relives.  No, now, as then, the only thing Cas can do is burn along with him; trapped in the same scene, suffering the same fate, their feelings for one another the fuel that set them ablaze._

_There are more words, then, and less clothing, and the Dean who watches from aloft feels like screaming as Lucifer speaks still more of the words Dean knew he would.  “I can’t—I don’t know how gentle I can be.  I don’t—want to hurt you.”_

_He has no voice, but he feels a hysterical laugh bubble up in his nonexistent chest as the Dean who is on his knees on the floor, the Dean who does not know any better, breathes a response.  “It’s okay.  Really.  I don’t—I don’t mind.  I want this.  Want you.”_

_It’s okay (if you hurt me)._

_Really (it is)._

_I don’t—(care about anything but having you)_

_I don’t mind (if it hurts)._

_I want this (to happen, no matter what)._

_Want you (to have me, all of me, always)._

_Lucifer takes him at his word._

_~*~_

He tears himself from the dream just as Lucifer demands to know where the lubricant is, and when he awakens, there are no moments of disorientation.  He knows exactly where and who he is, and he knows exactly what was happening.  He knows it was only a dream.

It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Again, he is bathed in sweat, but he doesn’t bother to shower.

It wouldn’t help.

Some kinds of filth can’t be washed clean.

~*~

He doesn’t get back to sleep.

~*~

Sometime mid-morning, Dean is seated at the table, hunched over his laptop.  Theoretically, he’s looking for a case, but in reality, he barely sees the usual litany of news websites he’s clicking through.  Halfway across the room, Cas and Sam are speaking in low voices.  It’s nothing but a distant hum in the background, the rich baritone of Sam’s voice mingling with the grating gravel of Castiel’s, familiar and as close to comforting as anything is nowadays.  They speak just a hair too low for Dean to make out individual words, which relieves him of the pressure of trying, and instead he simply drifts in a haze of exhaustion and brooding.

Maybe he hasn’t been tuned in enough, or maybe it’s simple chance and Cas really does happen to lift his volume a bit at that particular second, or maybe the baby Jesus just really hates Dean.  Whatever the case, the familiar growl of Cas’s voice breaks through Dean’s daze with a single syllable. 

“Lu—” and he’s going to end the word with _bricant,_ Dean knows it, and Dean is going to find himself on his knees, half naked before a man that looks like Cas but _isn’t,_ and oh God he’s back in the dream only it wasn’t a dream, it actually happened, it actually really honestly and now he’s back in it, the reality of it, and—

“—kewarm,” Cas finishes, and probably some part of Dean hears it but it’s way too late for that to matter now because the past has him in her claws and she doesn’t let go easy.

His breath is coming in short, harsh gasps, chest heaving with the effort of getting even that much air and his heart is pounding fit to burst.  He has broken out in a cold sweat and as much as he knows he is in the library and behind him are Sam and Cas—the real Cas—he also _isn’t,_ and they _aren’t._

He wants to move, to tear himself out of his chair, to flail at the archangel kneeling in front of him or at least the vicious, perniciously immersive memory which insists that he is.  Instead he finds himself unable to move, pinned into his chair, and the more trapped he feels the harder it gets to breathe.  Way too late, some part of his brain starts the feeble chant; _don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it don’t_ but it is too late for that, much too late, and—holy _shit._

Suddenly Sam is in front of him, crouched down so he is eye-level with Dean, face sure and steady and serious, and he is speaking in a tone that says he has been speaking for some time.

“—with me, can you do that?”

Dean stares at him in total bewilderment, still choking to death on perfectly good air, and Sam speaks again, voice low and soothing. 

“I need you to breathe with me, Dean.  Don’t think, just focus on my breathing and breathe with me.  We’re gonna breathe in for three and out for four.  In—one, two, three,” Jesus fuck, he must be out of his mind if he thinks that this is gonna work, “and out—one, two, three, four.  C’mon, Dean, stop thinking and focus.  The only thing you need to do right now is breathe with me.  Watch my chest and breathe with me.”

Sam goes silent and his rising and falling chest fills Dean’s vision, takes over his consciousness, and suddenly there is no room to be losing his mind inside the ( _don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ because the only thing that exists is Sam’s breathing, steady as a metronome, something to hang onto.

Dean can’t say how long has gone by but after a time he finds his breathing is regular, if shaky, and Sam gives him a very small smile.  His words could be condescending, but they’re not, and Dean finds himself searching warily for pity in his eyes and instead finding compassion, edged with a terrible, knowing sadness.  “There.  That’s better, isn’t it?  No, don’t say anything, just keep breathing with me.”

They breathe for a time, and Dean realizes that he was shaking only when it starts to taper off.  Only now does he remember Cas, jerking slightly as his head starts to swivel to look for the angel.

“He’s not here,” Sam says, his voice still pitched low and soothing, “I sent him on an errand when I realized what was happening.  It’s okay.  It’s just us.  Do you think you can talk now?”

“I—yeah,” Dean says, voice strangled.  “It—uh.”  Jesus, what the hell can he really say?  He can’t brush it off, Sam clearly realized what was happening since he stepped in to stop it, and come to think of it… “Wait, how did you know to do that?  How did you—”

“When you have some time,” Sam says, his voice gentle in a way Dean has really only ever heard with traumatized witnesses and victims, “you should do some reading up on the warning signs of an oncoming panic attack.  Coping strategies, too.  This isn’t the first time this has happened, yeah?”

Dean opens his mouth to deny it, then remembers two nights ago and slumps a little in his chair, shaking his head wordlessly.

“While you’re at it,” Sam says, catching Dean’s eye and refusing to release it, “read up on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and remember that you’re not actually as alone as you think you are.”

That’s getting just a little too close for comfort to things Dean’s not ready to glance at voluntarily, let alone discuss, and that about does it for him.  He doesn’t really plan to rise but suddenly finds himself on his feet.  Sam rises too, backing off in response to the wordless order.  He smiles faintly at Dean, tipping him a nod of acknowledgment.  There is something so knowing, so _old_ , in Sam’s face that Dean thinks it might break his heart if it weren’t already pulverized.

The little brother Dean has tried all his life to protect knew how to help Dean not because he’s a nerd who reads too much but because he needed those skills himself.  Because there was a time when he was barely keeping his head above water, and Dean did what he could to help, but he didn’t do this.  Couldn’t do this.

The knowledge of this past failure to be what Sam needed him to be—atop so very many other, more recent failures—is the final straw on an already broken back, and Dean has to turn away before looking into those too-old, too-knowing eyes destroys him once and for all.

“I’m—gonna go take a nap,” he grates out, “haven’t been sleeping well.”

Dean only sees it out of the corner of his eye but still, he thinks he has never seen a sadder smile than the one Sam gifts him with as he stumbles out of the library.

~*~

He falls asleep surprisingly fast.

The dream picks up exactly where it left off.

Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry. 
> 
> Things are going to get worse before they get better (I seem to say that a lot about this story). A great deal worse. Please continue to watch for shifting tags in future chapters, I'm not in this to trigger anybody.
> 
> Down to Size is next on my list to update. I hope that updates to both of them will be coming on a more regular basis moving forward, but I'm not making any promises. Life is complicated at the moment.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me and the boys.


	7. Half the Naked Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The memories are bad enough. The dreams are worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the updates are coming slow. This one was a hard one to write. Thanks for being patient with me.

_Cas is laughing and the sound warms Dean in places that have never seen the light of day.  He is laughing, too, because they are an angel of the Lord and a seasoned and skilled hunter, their bodies finely tuned, dangerous instruments, and despite all that they are staggering and bouncing off one another as they try to remove their pants without letting go of each other.  Dean can’t bear the thought of not touching Cas, not now, when he_ finally _gets to touch him after so many years of self-imposed abstinence.  Sure, there were casual touches, but they were just pale imitations of what Dean can now finally admit to himself he has been wanting almost from the first.  This?  This is different.  This is it, finally, the opportunity to touch Cas, to be touched by Cas, in all the ways he’s been craving._

_Even so, some small part of Dean, the ever-present little dark voice inside, sneers that he’s dreaming if he thinks he really gets to have this, if he thinks he’s actually going to be allowed something this good, this pure in his life.  For once, Dean silences the voice easily, shoving it back behind its door and thinking of it no more._

_He probably should’ve listened to it.  In hindsight, of course, he knows that the voice was right.  Dean would never have been given such a gift.  His life simply does not work that way._

_The Dean watching this from aloft is torn between pity and disgust as he looks down upon himself, so eager, so desperate to have this that he’s willing to ignore three decades of experience which ought to tell him this is too good to be true.  And somehow, despite it all, he still hasn’t entirely learned his lesson.  Even now, despite what he knows is going to happen, he can’t help the yearning, the jealousy, as he watches the scene unfold._

_The Dean below him doesn’t know what’s going to happen yet.  He is still immersed in the lie, still fully believing that somehow, after so many years, he and Cas have bridged that final divide.  Still fully believing that the power of their—of what is between them—has performed a miracle, has beaten Lucifer back.  He has another few precious moments before his world is shattered, before he is broken wide open and left raw and bleeding from the kind of wounds that don’t heal—and the Dean who watches, the Dean whose lifeblood is still oozing sluggishly out of those months-old wounds wishes desperately he could have another few moments of blissful ignorance.  Just a few moments in which he can forget what’s going to happen, what did happen, and instead feel the elation of these moments.  He is so far removed from those feelings, those feelings that were pulverized by the oncoming waves of horror and disgust and violation that overtook them—he barely remembers what it felt like to be so happy, to be so sure of himself and of Cas.  It’s a feeling he knows he will never get back, and the knowledge fuels these moments of yearning._

_This wish, this desire, is as futile as all of Dean’s wishes end up being.  He cannot go back to the wonderful moments before it all fell apart (and a part of him knows it is a terrible betrayal, both of himself and of the real Cas, to even wish for it at all).  He cannot go back, and he cannot erase what happened, and he cannot wake up.  Instead, once more, he must witness._

_Dean would give anything not to have to watch this, but his subconscious apparently has other plans, because the scene proceeds apace.  At last Cas and memory-Dean’s pants are off and as they seize one another’s hands and hurry down the hall toward his bedroom, Dean drifts along with them, still watching from above, unable to close the eyes this incorporeal form lacks in order to block out what is coming.  Even as he watches and follows from above, he also feels Castiel’s warm, firm hand in his own, the cool stone floors against his bare feet, the way his breath is coming quick with adrenaline and desire.  He is both Deans simultaneously in an experience that probably ought to be more disorienting than it is.  Hell, he wishes he was too disoriented to really grasp what is happening, too disoriented to fully experience this again, this time from two angles.  As if the real deal hadn’t been bad enough._

_Just after revealing himself post-coitus, Lucifer spoke words that Dean will never forget as long as he lives.  He said a lot of things, really, but this was the first: “You know, I figured you’d be a good lay, but I had no idea you’d be so needy, kiddo.”_

_Even the memory of the words fills him with a kind of shame that would allow him to shrivel up and die in a just world.  Shame, not because the words were untrue but because of how very true they were.  It is these words that run on a loop inside Dean’s head as he watches himself kneel on the bed (the same bed his unconscious body currently rests in) and stick his ass in the air, as he watches the angel who is not Cas start to finger him open, as he watches himself demanding more at every turn._

_Not-Cas makes a soft sound as the first finger nudges just inside Dean, and the Dean that now knows everything immediately recognizes it as a quickly-controlled huff of laughter, derisive amusement at how fast Dean is to roll over and beg for it._

_Lucifer is barely biting back his laughter, at the same moment that the look on Dean’s own face is so open, so utterly vulnerable in a way Dean virtually never allows himself to be.  The knowledge of how that openness is being exploited makes Dean want to scream, to throw things, to steal away in the dead of night and find some remote cave where he never has to look anyone in the eye again._

_He’s already learned that he cannot scream, cannot warn the Dean on the bed.  He has no mouth, no vocal cords, no body with which to stop this.  He is merely a captive audience, the second of two in the room who are forced to witness every moment of this and powerless to stop it._

_Despite his best efforts to focus on anything else, Dean cannot look away from the sight of Cas’s fingers, controlled by Lucifer, pistoning in and out of him.  Cannot stop_ feeling _those fingers sliding slickly in and out of him.  Cannot help but both speak the words and simultaneously hear his own voice pleading wantonly: “Cas, please,” the Dean who still believes pants, “now, please, now, need you.”_

_The wave of nausea that overtakes Dean is so overwhelming that it does the thing Dean’s willpower was unable to manage—it wakes him up._

_~*~_

Once again he comes to himself bathed in sweat, but this time he is also gagging, his stomach trying to turn itself inside out in protest at what he just watched.  It is only with mammoth force of will that Dean swallows back the bile creeping up his throat.  The last thing he needs right now is the indignity of stripping off vomit-stained sheets, of scrubbing the floor of the evidence of just how not okay he really is.

The clock on his bedside table informs him that it’s not even noon yet.  He slept for barely an hour and while catnaps have been known to recharge him, this one has only drained him further.  He strips his sour-smelling, sweat-soaked clothing off as slowly and laboriously as if he were fifty years older and hunched with arthritis, shrugs into his robe, and plods down the hallway to shower.  If he’s lucky, perhaps a hot shower will not only clean away the stink of sleep sweat but also serve to wake him up further, to pull his head back from the dream, from the _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)._

It doesn’t.

By the time he makes his way back to the library, Cas is back from wherever Sam sent him off to, seated at the long table alone.  Dean nods a greeting in his general direction, unable to even pretend to look him in the eye.  He doesn’t think he can stand to look head-on at Cas’s face just now, because however sincere his expression is, Dean can’t help but remember that Lucifer’s expressions looked pretty fucking sincere too.

From the library he ventures through into the kitchen.  He’s not particularly hungry—it’s been a long time since he felt truly hungry—but it’s something to do, something to focus on.  He hunts through the kitchen, fixes and forces down some manner of food that he doesn’t remember ten minutes later.

It doesn’t much matter.  Everything tastes like cardboard these days.

~*~

Bedtime comes both too soon and not soon enough.  It’s difficult and uncomfortable, having to interact with Sam and Cas, having to put on as good a face as he can muster despite knowing that neither of them is even remotely fooled by it.  Honestly, it’s not even about them believing it, it’s about the message it sends, the message that says any discussion about _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ is strictly off-limits.  It says that any mention of the fact that Dean is cobbled together with little more than safety pins and spit will not be well-received.  It is the equivalent of a Do Not Disturb sign plastered across Dean’s forehead, and despite the meaningful looks Sam and Cas exchange with each other and aim at Dean, they are mostly respectful of it.

By the time the clock hits 10:30, Dean decides he can finally get away with escaping to his bedroom, using the perfectly true excuse that he hasn’t been sleeping well and is too tired to stay up later.

Dean is running on minimal sleep (and no truly restful sleep) in the last 48 hours.  He knows from personal experience that it’s possible to be too exhausted to dream—or at least to remember one’s dreams—and he dares to hope that his overwhelming tiredness will do him a solid tonight.  He so badly needs real _rest._

In truth, though, he’s not expecting the universe to be so kind to him.  Dean is no Sammy, but he’s more than smart enough to recognize a pattern as blatant as this one.  After three painfully vivid dreams, each of which picks up exactly where the previous one ended, it’s clear that Dean’s subconscious is determined to take him through the whole horrifying experience.  Sam would probably say that his unconscious mind is trying to work through the trauma via dreams, since he refuses to face _(don’t talk about it don’t think about it don’t remember it)_ during his waking hours.  As he pulls on sweatpants and a ratty band tee, as he climbs into bed and flips off the light, Dean muses that if Sam is right, logic would seem to suggest that if he can just get through it, just dream his way to the moment that Lucifer finally walked out of the bunker, it’ll be over.  He just needs to make it to the end—unless by some miracle he’s lucky enough that his mind has decided to give him a pass on the rest of it.

He’s not, and it hasn’t.

It figures.

~*~

_Dean is no stranger to rude awakenings, but the inverse—a rude asleepening (if that’s even a word)—is pretty damn new to him.  Not that any of the dreams started out particularly fun, but suddenly re-entering the scene just as Lucifer simpers some bullshit line about wanting to see Dean’s face while fucking him?  Definitely the worst jumping off point yet._

_The Dean on his bed rolls over and plants his feet, arching himself up a little in wordless wanton invitation, and the Dean watching the scene again feels the nausea start to roil in his nonexistent stomach.  His vision greys a little, the scene dimming slightly as the Cas who is not Cas slicks up his cock and moves against and into Dean._

_It might be easier if his actual memories of the experience were less vivid.  In his waking hours, he works so hard to repress it, to never let himself look at it, but the moment he has to for some reason, it’s all right there in vivid, three-dimensional technicolor, detail for tiny detail.  And that means that Dean’s mind easily reconstructs exactly what it feels like to be the one on the bed as well as an observer.  He both remembers and relives the burn as “Cas” presses carefully inside, remembers wanting more, demanding more, even as he speaks the same words anew.  He feels once again the way the burn intensifies so sharply as he finally convinces the angel who is actually an archangel to take off the kid gloves and fuck him already._

_Lucifer does not take much convincing, is fucking him in earnest now, and from his vantage point Dean can see everything.  On a logical level he knows that the only things he can be sure of are the ones he actually saw and felt on that day, but that’s little comfort when his brain has done such an impressive job of filling in the blanks, of showing him what it must have looked like, his ass opening for Lucifer’s cock, taking every inch the Devil gave him and never once asking for anything but more and harder._

_He sees and hears all that and more, both feels the physical sensations and watches the scene unfold, reliving every second of it in miserably exquisite detail._

_At the time, he was so wrapped up in sensation, in the touch of rough hands, in the messy kisses being traded, in the feeling of being just slightly too full, too stretched.  So lost in passion that he totally failed to register Lucifer’s one true error.  Now, when half of him watches from outside, he notices immediately:_

_“Can you come just like this Dean?” Lucifer pants. “Come on my cock?  I think you can.  I think you’ve been waiting years for the chance to do just that.”_

_These words, the words that tip Dean over the edge—they’re all Lucifer.  They’re not words Cas would ever have spoken.  There’s a taunting edge to them that Cas, in all his eternal guilelessness, would never have used, and even as the Dean who is still immersed in it grunts, cock jerking as the waves of climax crest over him, observer-Dean’s already limitless shame expands and grows, twists and balloons until it encompasses everything that he ever was and everything he might once have been.  He is nothing now, nothing but his shame, nothing but Lucifer’s used up leavings.   He is not Sam’s brother or John and Mary’s son.  He is not hunter or classic rock lover or old car enthusiast.  He is nothing but the man who came on command with Lucifer’s cock buried in his ass, and that man?  That man is nothing._

_And he’s about to know it._

_Dean stares down at himself, at an expression of such perfect post-coital contentedness that he doubts he’s ever worn it before (and surely never will again).  It barely has time to make itself at home, to carve out a place for itself on his face, before a too-high-pitched giggle breaks the silence.  Dean’s eyes fly open, locking on the face that does not belong to Castiel._

_“You know,” Lucifer says cheerfully, “I figured you’d be a good lay, but I had no idea you’d be so_ needy _, kiddo.”_

_Dean watches as his face freezes, as confusion starts to give way to understanding, and then to disbelief, and finally to horror._

_“No,” he says, and this time it’s both of them.  The Dean who is in the moment and the Dean who had to witness, both speaking in unison, holding up this one feeble word as a shield against the truth of what they have done.  Of what they have allowed to be done to them._

_“Yes,” Lucifer says, grinning broadly at him, and that is when Dean realizes that there’s still a cock inside of him._

_The next few moments pass in a blur, and if there were any justice in the world, his subconscious would give up the ghost now, would just let him wake up, would not drag him through these last horrific moments of what happened._

_There isn’t any justice in the world.  At least, not in Dean’s world.  Never really has been.  Why should this be any different?_

_The Dean on the bed is shaking violently, crouched naked against the wall.  He reminds the Dean who watches of nothing so much as a trapped and injured animal, waiting in terror for the final blow to fall.  A rabbit with its foot caught in a trap.  A deer with a non-fatal buckshot wound._

_Lucifer takes the opportunity to twist the knife, to confirm to Dean what he always knew on some level about Sammy’s time in the cage.  About what sort of diversions Lucifer found to amuse himself.  About the things that his little brother, the one he’s so often failed to protect, has been through._

_That knowledge cuts deep, slashes wider an already gaping wound, but it’s not the killing blow.  No, Lucifer has a final, immeasurably cruel weapon up his sleeve, and he’s having far too much fun to stop now.  He is leaning against the doorjamb now, one elbow propped casually as if he just stopped in for a quick chat rather than to tear Dean’s world off its foundations and burn it to the ground._

_“If it’s any comfort,” he says, smirking, and of course it is not, it is the very opposite of comfort, “Castiel was with us, in a sense.  He may not have been driving the bus, but he had a front row seat to the main event!  You wouldn’t believe the noise he was making, too.  Fought harder than you can imagine, till I told him if he didn’t sit back and watch like a good boy, I’d finish you once we were done.  Then he quieted right down.  Well, mostly.  Cried like a baby the whole time.  Matter of fact, he still is.”_

_The last blow is extraordinarily well-aimed.  For all his bravado and apparently casual playfulness, Lucifer is a genius, a master at knowing just where to cut, just how to unmake a man with surgical precision._

_His words are nothing if not effective._

_Dean is undone._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said it last chapter as well, but please, in the upcoming chapters, WATCH FOR SHIFTING TAGS. Things are (I know, I know, it's tradition for me to say this at this point) going to get a lot worse before they get better.
> 
> Hopefully the next update will come a lot quicker than the last few.
> 
> As always, thanks for sticking with me and the boys through this painful journey. Trust me when I tell you it's harder to write than it is to read. Let me hear from you; it helps.


	8. Like Wounds That Needed Healing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He did it. He survived reliving it all via dreams. Now he can finally catch a break, right?
> 
> ...right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Chuck in wherever-He-is, WATCH. FOR. SHIFTING. TAGS. And trust them. They are not joking. This is a fucking doozy.
> 
> For those of you who've been waiting for an update on this guy for fourteen months (I am SO SORRY), you have [metarachel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metarachel) to thank for at long last getting an update. She had some seriously nasty back surgery recently, and she loves whump more than anything else and more than anyone (except maybe Hazel, you know it's true), so I sat down to try to write a bit of a new chapter for her earlier today.
> 
> Six hours and 8516 words later, you have this monstrosity.
> 
> So...here y'all are. I cannot emphasize enough. SHIFTING. TAGS. New potential triggers like whoa.
> 
> And, uh, sorry about this.

If he’d had to wager, Dean would’ve bet just about anything that he’d awaken from the dream exactly as he has from each episode in the series of them.  That he would be jerked awake with the abruptness and violence of a fist to the face.  He should have, right?  This dream—this one in particular, with the most joyful and most terrible moments of the whole thing—should’ve dragged him screaming out of sleep, should’ve left him shuddering and gagging and weeping, should’ve sent him stumbling back into a too-hot shower to scrub his skin raw yet again. 

It doesn’t, and it’s this which disorients him most. 

Instead, he wakes up slowly, the kind of gradual, comfortable return to consciousness that heralds a solid, restful night’s sleep.  And yes, he remembers the dream—remembers it in agonizing, precise detail, what it felt like both to witness and to re-experience the _(don’t think about it don’t talk about it don’t remember it)_ —but there’s an element of distance to it.  The horror is there, but it’s as if there is something standing in the way and softening the blow.

It takes him a few moments, as awareness sluggishly nudges somnolence out of the way, edging into its spot and bringing Dean back to alertness, but eventually he remembers.

There was _the_ dream, yes, but it wasn’t the only one.  Because he remembers, perhaps a little less vividly, a little less technicolor, but no less certain, the dream that followed.

And it was…just a dream.  Just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, vaguely ridiculous dream, no different than those he used to regale Sam with before _(don’t think about it don’t talk about it don’t remember it)_ everything fell apart.

His brow furrows as he tries to sort it out, but all he can come up with is the certainty that Sam’s hair had been replaced by creamed spinach, styled into some pretty absurd shapes (he’s pretty sure a unicorn figured into it somehow) and that Sam had been trying really hard to convince Dean that it was all the rage and he should really give it a try too.  He’d been arguing that the creamed spinach hair was impractical and messy and that mashed potato hair was where it was _really_ at. 

It’s a stupid dream, a ridiculous premise, and Dean has never been so elated to find that his brain has been doing a surreal two-step while he’s just trying to get some goddamn sleep, because he’s sure—he’s _sure—_ that the food-hair dream came after _the_ dream.  As if his mind, having finally waded through the last of the _(don’t think about it don’t talk about it don’t remember it),_ had calmly and easily just…moved on.  As if slogging through every damn detail of it had been the last order of business before his subconscious or whatever the hell part of him was driving the bus while he slept let it go.

Dean takes a moment to do something he usually tries to avoid at all costs these days and takes inventory.  Really pays attention and queries his mind to see where it sits.

What he finds is no worse than where he was last night but, a little discouragingly, it’s also no better.  Some part of him was sure that if he could just get through it, could just survive the reliving, he would find some measure of catharsis on the other side.  That the march through the worst of it had been his brain dragging him into working through the whole fucked up thing, and somehow by revisiting it, he could…maybe not find peace, but at least stumble into some kind of acceptance.

If he’d hoped for some kind of healing, some good to come out of the nighttime trek through Deanifer’s (the portmanteau pops unbidden into his head and nearly makes him gag in disgust) Greatest Hits, he’s left disappointed.

At least it’s a familiar feeling.

~*~

In deference to the fact that he’s done, he’s survived the dream tour and it’s finally fucking over, he makes the effort to be a little better today.  A little more chipper, a little calmer, a little less jumpy.  And he oversells it a little, sure, because he can’t stand the wounded looks from Cas and the concerned ones from Sam, but it’s not all a façade.  Some part of him really does feel a bit calmer, despite lacking the longed-for catharsis.  It’s amazing what not having to be terrified of what you’re gonna see when you climb into bed and close your eyes does for the mood.

He makes breakfast for the whole bunker, insists that Cas eats at least one pancake, tells Sam about the creamed spinach dream and suggests that maybe he wants to consider trying it cause it was a good look for him and can’t be higher maintenance than his usual coiffure—and thoroughly savors Bitchface number 62 (this one translates approximately to “shut the fuck up about my hair already you jerk”).  On his way back into the library to serve up seconds, he catches Sam and Cas murmuring quietly.  He can’t make out the words, but when they cut off abruptly and turn to look at Dean, he’s not faced with two matching sets of sorrowful puppy dog eyes. 

It’s progress; he’ll take it.

The day goes well enough that Sam actually suggests sometime mid-afternoon that maybe he could start looking for a hunt, although Dean scoffs at him.

“There’s no way you’re ready to get back out there.  Give yourself at least a couple weeks to, I dunno, heal up from a gunshot wound.”

“There’s _nothing to heal from,_ Dean, Cas patched me up good as new!”  This one is Bitchface number 27 (“stop coddling me, I’m not eight years old anymore”), and Dean grins at the familiarity of it.  Sam hasn’t given him a bitchface in days.  If he’s feeling confident enough about Dean’s mental health to offer up two in a matter of hours, things are finally settling out. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.  There’s still no rush.  Give it another day or two and we’ll look for something close to home.”

“Fine, _Mom.”_ Dean flips Sam the bird, his own mother henning and Sam’s impatient bitching about it a familiar and comforting dance.

After dinner they all pile into the den, and while Dean still can’t bring himself to occupy the same couch as Cas, he doesn’t take pains to seat himself as far as it’s physically possible to be without leaving the room.  Out of the corner of his eye he sees Sam and Cas exchange another hopeful look.  Rolling his eyes, he opens the movie-of-the-night bidding with a passionate and eloquent defense of Die Hard 2 which Cas and Sam both completely ignore.  He’s quickly outvoted and they end up watching some subtitled monstrosity set during the French Revolution.  He promptly earns Bitchface number 16 (“You have no appreciation for the finer things in life, you uncultured swine”) from both Sam and Cas when he takes it upon himself to suggest alternate and way funnier translations of the indecipherable French audio, and by the time the credits roll, his mood’s better than it’s been since he clawed his way back to consciousness after the first of the dreams. 

Despite the fact that he knows he probably at least partially ruined their enjoyment of the movie (don’t get him started on how anyone could actually enjoy that overwrought nonsense), Sam and Cas wish him a good night with sincerity.  Dean doesn’t even flinch when Sam claps him on the back as he passes Dean to head to his own room for the night.

For the first time in days, Dean doesn’t feel like he’s dreading falling asleep, like he’s only doing it because his body demands rest and won’t be put off.  He’s still tired, half of a peaceful night’s sleep isn’t nearly enough to undo the exhaustion he earned through several nights of hell, and he’s actually kind of looking forward to a full night in which he has to deal with nothing more disturbing than mashed potatoes dribbling into his ear when he tries to construct them into pigtails (he conveniently failed to mention that particular detail to Sam when regaling him with the dream).

Sleep comes for him quickly tonight, its heavy weight pulling him under what feels like mere seconds after his head hits the pillow, as if the next phase, the next dream in the series—because in what universe was he dumb enough to believe it was actually over—couldn’t wait to wrap its icy fingers around his throat.

~*~

_It starts the same.  The dream is the exact mirror of reality, and the only thing to distinguish it from the recent episodic foray into reliving it all is that this time, there is no Dean observing from aloft.  It’s only him, just one Dean, fully corporeal and with his skin crawling from the weight of Lucifer’s gaze wrought with Castiel’s eyes as the devil slowly and deliberately comes down the steps and into the bunker._

_“Hey there, champ,” Lucifer says in Castiel’s voice and Dean is out of his chair like a shot, barely registering the way it topples over and skids backward, because Lucifer has painted a cruel imitation of a grin across Cas’s familiar face and it’s at least as horrifying as the mocking voice that is all wrong.  “Easy, little fella, easy!  You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Dean.  Now, why could that be?”_

_Dean knows what is going to happen, what has already happened, but it is as if he is locked inside himself, present and aware but not in control, just as Cas is locked inside Lucifer.  He knows this waltz and although he desperately wants to break out of it, he must follow the steps precisely.  Dancing with the devil, indeed._

_He lifts a single finger, flipping Lucifer the bird.  The archangel laughs, just as Dean knew he would, and it is both like and entirely unlike Cas’s laugh.  It curdles Dean’s stomach and makes him want to claw his own ears off purely so he doesn’t have to hear it._

_“So feisty!  I just love it,” Lucifer coos, scrunching his nose to indicate that Dean is_ cute _in his fury rather than intimidating.  It only stokes that fury, as Lucifer must have known it would.  Dean’s fingers curl into fists and his vision swims as the desire to go nuclear wars with the knowledge that there’s no fucking point.  Lucifer grins, the taunt evident in his face before it comes out in his words.  “I hated to interrupt you when you were so clearly…” he leans in, face mischievous, lifting his brows quickly twice and once again bringing Gabriel to mind, “…busy.”_

_And yes, Dean remembers suddenly, he had been watching gay porn.  Porn with actors who just happened to bear some vague resemblance to himself and to the archangel standing before him, except of course it was a seraph and not that archangel that filled Dean’s thoughts and sent him swelling in his pants.  Just as before, he can think of nothing to say, no words to deflect or defend against the accusation, the knowing glint in Lucifer’s eyes._

_“Honestly, Deano,” Lucifer says, in no way put off by Dean’s silence, and yeah, Dean still loathes that stupid nickname, “now that I think about it, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.  I mean, I already knew how sweet little Cassie felt about you.”  He taps a finger against his forehead, leans in as if to confide in Dean, “hard not to know all the little guy’s secrets when we’re spooned so close.  It explained a lot, why he’s always been so willing to sacrifice himself for you, so protective.  What I wouldn’t have called,” his finger skates across the backrest of one of the library’s chairs as he advances, and Dean finds himself moving backward, speed exactly mirroring that of the monster who stalks him.  He knows, as he knew then, that any sudden movements will be rewarded with the pounce, and even though the build up is agonizing, he’s sure as hell not going to invite whatever comes next—what he_ knows _comes next, “was that you felt the same way!  Mr. Masculine himself!  I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that a little bit of that is…compensation.”_

_Dean realizes anew that he has yet to speak a single syllable, to say one solitary word since Lucifer appeared—not that the man needs any response.  His smug self-satisfaction lends itself so well to monologuing.  As before, the realization comes in a rush, what Lucifer is actually saying, what he means, what he’s intimating about Cas’s feelings for Dean.  It hits just as hard as it did then, this knowledge, and the awareness that it comes much too late to do anything about it, too late for it to matter.  Just one more in a series of missed opportunities, though none of them have stung this much._

_Whatever Lucifer sees in his silent face earns still more laughter.  “Deano, as much as I would just love for us to sit down and have a fireside chat about this, maybe figure out what size crowbar it’ll take to pry you out of that closet you’ve stapled yourself in, I actually didn’t come for a social call.”_

_“You don’t say, asshole?” Dean sneers, forced to mirror the steps of a dance that has already happened, no matter how much he wants to break out of it, to turn tail and simply run, run and never look back, maybe change his name, even ditch the beloved Impala just so he never has to face this._

_“I know, it’s disappointing, but maybe next time I’ll stop by just for tea.” Lucifer makes an exaggerated sad face, but his steps never falter as he continues to stalk Dean, who keeps on backing up, circling the table in some bizarre pantomime of an actual dance. “Today, though, has a purpose.”_

_“Whatever you’re hoping to accomplish, it ain’t happening, so you might as well just flutter off,” Dean tells him, and even though they both know that he is terrified, he’s doing a damn good job of hiding it.  Or he thinks so, anyway, but Lucifer just laughs again, pausing his pursuit of Dean to draw out a chair and slide into it, putting his feet up on the edge of the table to indicate just how relaxed he is, in contrast to Dean’s inner turmoil._

_“Well, Deano, while I didn’t come to gossip about your abortive love life, you’ve given me all manner of ideas.  First, though, I do think we should have a little chitchat.  Why don’t you sit down?”_

_Dean snorts, but even as he makes the noise he knows he’s supposed to make, he’s registering that something is not quite right.  He’s relived this whole sordid affair so many times in his own mind, and then in his dreams, that while he’s not immediately able to pinpoint the inconsistency, he knows there is one.  Something is not the same._

_Before he can try to untangle the threads, to figure out exactly what’s changed, Lucifer is speaking again, and these words are entirely familiar.  “What I’m sure you and my ex-roomie,” and yes, it hurts just as much as it did then, to know that he’s talking about Sammy, about what he did to Sammy in the cage, “already know is that Auntie Darkness has gone off the grid altogether.  Just poof, like she never existed at all.  And that?  That’s not a good thing.  It means she’s busy.  Means she’s planning something.”  He’s right, of course, and Dean knows it, knew it at the time, but he wasn’t gonna play along.  “Now, I’ve already tried just about everything I can think of to tempt her out of hiding, but she’s not playing ball.  And that’s when it occurred to me that the power was with me all the time, Dorothy!”  And once again, Dean takes a step back, jaw clenching.  This was when he started to see an inkling of Lucifer’s real plans, started to grasp what he was about, and it sends the same rush of dread through him, nausea curdling his gut in anticipation._

_“See, there are only two things I know for sure she has strong feelings about.  The first one is Dad, and he?  Well, he’s still rocking the deadbeat status.  That avenue’s a wash.  But the other—the other just happens to conveniently be right in front of me as we speak!”  Lucifer leans toward Dean, face scrunching up in apparent pleasure at the revelation.  And then he drops back against the chair, his voice hardening, the humor fading out of it.  It’s as chilling now as it was then.  “Amara sees you as hers, Deano.  You let her out.  You’re bonded.  If there’s one thing on this sad little planet she actually cares about, it’s you.  That means the straightest road to her goes directly through you.  Well,” he adds with a malicious little snigger, “maybe not the straightest, given our recent discoveries, but you catch my drift.  And that’s where things get interesting.”_

_Wait—again, there’s something not quite right here, and this time Dean knows what.  That last line, the bit about things getting interesting?  That’s new.  He’s quite sure Lucifer never said that.  He, Dean, is locked into the things he said and did before.  It seemed, at first blush, like this was going to be the same old reliving (except, of course, that he was allowed to skip most of these bits before, as the dream jumped right to the ‘good stuff,’ to the real meat of it.  Not this time.  Why not this time?).  But…no.  It’s_ different, _and Dean has no idea what that means, except that it is somehow far more terrifying than the idea of having to relive exactly the same horror again._

 _At least in the reliving, he is forewarned.  He knows exactly what’s coming, what will be said, what will be done.  No matter how awful it is, there is some measure of comfort in the familiar.  This?  The changes are miniscule, but they are_ changes, _and that means all bets are off.  It leaves Dean reeling, even as the metaphorical car wobbles back into its lane on this highway to hell.  It’s his line now, and he delivers it with every ounce of the venom he feels._

 _“We both know where you’re going with this, so why don’t you get on with it?  Or are you so in love with the sound of your own voice that you have to take ten years to get around to a point?”  It’s a lie, though, because he doesn’t quite know where Lucifer is going with this, the new_ this, _and he wishes like hell that he wasn’t inviting it._

 _Lucifer gives him the same round of applause he did before, and he’s grinning, but there’s an additional edge to it, a hint of lascivious wickedness that was nowhere to be found the first time, the_ real _time._

_“Oh, well done, kiddo.  Very brave.  I almost believe that fearless façade.”  He tips his head on his neck and gazes at Dean, really taking him in, focusing on him, and then he goes on—and the car swerves wildly as he jerks the wheel off the road, off the familiar highway Dean loathes but knows so well.  “But I think you’re wrong.  You’ve got the general idea, of course.   If Amara can’t be drawn out any other way, I’m gonna have to resort to the obvious.  Threatening what matters to her, and that, of course, puts you squarely in my crosshairs…but oh, Dean-o, such ideas you’ve given me.”  Just as before, Lucifer is suddenly standing right in front of Dean, and just as before he staggers back a step.  Before, Lucifer tangled a hand in Dean’s shirt, but this time?  This time, he reaches out and seizes Dean’s bicep, his grip a steel vise.  Dean can feel bruises blossom under his flannel shirt, but he barely notices, too focused on the newness._

_“I—ideas?” Dean asks uncertainly, unable to stop himself, startling as he realizes that suddenly he’s been put back in control of his own voice, his own actions.  By altering the course of events, Lucifer has stolen Dean’s script, and it leaves him with something he’s lacked thus far—volition.  Fucking figures that he’d use it to offer that frightened little plea for information, for clarification.  Goddammit._

_“Ideas,” Lucifer confirms, leaning in close enough that Dean can feel hot breath against his face.  This is where the devil should be monologuing again, waxing poetic about the last time he beat Dean to a bloody pulp, happily anticipating getting to do the same damn thing again.  “See, Deano, I was gonna just kick the ever-loving shit out of you.  Really mess you up but good…but that_ video.  _I think we’ll change course just a little bit.  I bet we can find some way to get her attention that involves a little less bloodshed and a little more…mutual enjoyment.”_

 _Oh.  Oh, no.  No, no, no.  This is not how this is supposed to go.  This is not right.  They get here, eventually, but not like this.  By subterfuge.  By the manipulation that Lucifer excels so much at.  This, this…fucking_ proposition _is not right at all._

_And maybe he was wrong about the volition, because what he wants to do is demand to know why Lucifer is changing things, why it’s happening all wrong, but what he says is something else entirely.  “Dream on, you twisted fuck.  Anybody who tells you they enjoy your company is a fuckin’ liar, so you might as well get to pounding already.”  He meant a beating, of course.  He meant fists and kicks and knees to sensitive, soft parts—but that’s not how Lucifer takes it, and almost immediately Dean sees where he went wrong._

_“Oh, I intend to, Deano.  I figured maybe a little foreplay first, get us both a little hot and bothered.  Silly me, the video already got you there!  If you wanna get right down to business I can’t say that I object.”_

_“Back_ off,” _Dean demands, as if he had any hope of convincing Lucifer, as if his protests are anything but token and laughable to the ridiculously powerful archangel—and laugh he does, heartily, head thrown back.  Dean uses the opportunity, the minor distraction, to try to fight back in a way he never did the last time.  His knee comes up hard and fast, aiming directly for Lucifer’s groin (with a silent apology to Cas, since it’s his testicles Dean’s trying to rupture).  It doesn’t especially surprise him when he never makes contact.  The hand not gripping his arm shoots down, catching Dean’s knee—and then_ squeezing.  _Dean hears his kneecap shatter and is aware of crushing pressure a second before pain explodes.  He sways heavily on the one leg holding him up, vision hazing up with the indescribable pain.  He would crumple to the floor if he were not held fast by Lucifer, keeping him upright._

 _“I wasn’t_ going _to make this violent, but now you’re giving me no choice,” Lucifer whines, for all the world sounding put upon, as if Dean is just the worst for derailing his plans for, what, seduction?  Dean would laugh if he wasn’t too busy trying not to pass out from the pain.  “I thought we could take our time, maybe give you a little of this body you’ve been wanting so badly, even if the wrong angel’s driving the bus—but if you’re gonna make things difficult, I’m not averse to dragging you along for the ride.”  He pauses then and sniggers again, like a twelve-year-old boy making a blow job joke to his buddies.  “Get it, Deano?  The_ ride?” 

_Dean gets it, alright, and briefly irritation at Lucifer’s shitty, juvenile humor intrudes on the hurricane of terror and pain that is whipping through him.  Maybe if his knee wasn’t shooting spears of white-hot fire through him, the pain wiping his brain clear of sense with each throb, maybe if he wasn’t so stunned by the wild turn what should be a familiar scene has taken, he could find a comeback, drum up some sneering disgust to match against Lucifer’s lewd suggestions and humor, but as it is he comes up empty, and the only thing he knows for sure is that he’s not going to plead.  Whatever happens, he’s not going to beg Lucifer for mercy.  He didn’t before, when Lucifer was kicking the crap out of him, and he won’t now._

_But he will reach out to someone else.  He will plead with someone else. Even if ultimately, it just ends up pushing the car back onto the familiar old track, he’s got to do it.  “C—cas, I know you’re in there,” he mutters, pain thickening his tongue and making him stumble over his words.  “Fight him, you have to fight.  Don’t let him do this, you can stop him.”  He barely knows what he’s saying, except that there’s naked desperation in his voice._

_“Caaaas,” Lucifer sneers, mocking Dean’s earnest words, and it cuts almost as deep as each stab of pain from his ruined knee.  “Don’t bother, kiddo.  He’s buried real deep, locked up tight.  He can’t hear you or see you, although I’ll be sure to give him a greatest hits montage later.”_

_That—that’s not right either.  Lucifer is supposed to take this opportunity, to use Dean’s desperate wish for Cas to manipulate him.  This is all wrong, Dean thinks, as the hand that just crushed his knee reaches up and almost casually tangles in his shirts, literally tearing both of them right off of his back, leaving them to dangle by one sleeve, hanging from the place where Lucifer still grasps Dean’s arm tightly._

_“No!” Dean grates out, trying to jerk away.  He is rewarded with more mockery._

_“Noooo,” Lucifer imitates, grinning, barely noticing Dean’s attempt to break free.  “Yes, Deano.”  His voice drops with these words, hardening, lengthening into a hiss that reminds Dean why in the lore he’s so commonly associated with snakes.  “Oh, yes, indeed.  This is happening.  What could draw Amara’s attention faster than someone hurting_ and… _having you.  In the biblical sense.”  This is an echo of something he said before, after the fact, but it’s twisted up and wrong, just like the rest of this, just like the entire bizarrely altered scene._

_“Let go of me, you disgusting fucking—” he doesn’t manage to finish the epithet and doesn’t honestly know what he would’ve said anyway, because Lucifer takes him at his word and suddenly drops his arm.  Unsteady on his one working leg, Dean topples, spilling onto the floor, unable to strangle the shout of anguish as the shattered pieces of his knee grate against one another and bounce off the hard stone of the library’s floor.  The marble is cold against his shirtless belly and chest, though it’s hard to know whether it’s that or the sickening pain that sends a chill through him and raises goosebumps on his body._

_“If you insist,” Lucifer says ironically, taking a step back and crossing his arms over his chest.  The movement looks so much like Cas in his more petulant moments that for a second Dean is disoriented.  One glance at the face quickly dispels the illusion.  “Know what?  I’ll make you a deal.  I’m gonna count to ten, and if you can get out of the room before I hit ten, I’ll ‘flutter off’ as you put it.  In fact, I’ll sweeten the deal and heal your knee before I go.”_

_It’s a joke, they both know it.  Dean’s knee is too damaged for him to get anywhere in ten seconds, even if Lucifer counted slower than a sedated snail, and even if by some miracle Dean managed it, Lucifer would never keep his word.  He’s just toying with Dean, and Dean wishes he had the guts to call him on it, to tell him to just fucking get on with it already._

_But he can’t.  He can’t just let this happen, he can’t refuse an out, even if it’s only a mirage.  He spits at Lucifer’s feet, but when the archangel puts a single finger up and counts aloud, “One,” Dean turns and begins to drag himself toward the archway that leads to the rest of the bunker._

_Lucifer counts at a leisurely pace, humiliating Dean further with this evidence of how certain he is of his victory.  And he’s right to be.  Dean puts every ounce of strength he has left into it, dragging himself along the floor as fast as he can, every slight shift sending waves of agony through his leg.  “Six,” Lucifer singsongs, and Dean has barely made it eight feet.  The archway mocks him, still more than twenty feet away, but he’s not the giving up type.  He wastes two seconds trying to manage some kind of gimpy crawl but ends up collapsing to his stomach and loses another second fighting not to black out as his knee hits the floor.  By the time Lucifer trills the final count, “Ten,” Dean hasn’t even made it that many feet, and Lucifer only needs four strides to be looming over him.  Dean could roll over to look at him, but he can’t bear to see the messy black hair, the bright blue eyes and chapped lips twisted into an expression of mockery, of malice that their rightful owner has never worn.  He pants, staring at the floor he couldn’t traverse, at the archway that was never within reach._

_“Too bad, so sad, Dean.  But you put in a good effort.  Tell you what, I’ll split the difference with you.  Can’t have you passing out from that knee and missing all the fun…but you did earn it, so we’ll have to compromise.”  He sings out the last word, dragging it out, and Dean doesn’t have long to worry about what that means before Lucifer reaches down, weaving his fingers through Dean’s hair and gripping tight.  His hauls Dean halfway upright, and the pain in his scalp is vivid and sharp but it can’t begin to rival the agony that is his knee—or at least, it can’t until suddenly the crushing leg pain is gone._

_Not healed—Dean knows what that feels like, and this isn’t that.  This is something else altogether, because it’s not just the destroyed knee that he can’t feel—it’s his entire leg.  It’s numb, hanging limply, and when he tries to move it (albeit not with much hope), he finds that he can’t.  Lucifer has somehow taken not only the pain but all sensation and function from his leg.  It dangles uselessly beneath him, the hard swelling of his knee still evident under his jeans.  This is a temporary reprieve only, and at a heavy price.  Before he has the chance to do more than hiss out a breath in shock, he is in motion.  The hand tangled in his hair is the only thing holding him up, and he feels more than a few strands part from his scalp as Lucifer uses the grasp to drag him over to the long table._

_Dean doesn’t even have time to wonder before, with a careless wave of Lucifer’s free hand, the chairs part, skittering to either side, the papers on the table following suit to leave a broad stretch of its surface clear and easily accessible.  “There we go,” Lucifer trills happily, “a nice big space to work with for that pounding you were so eager to get to.”_

Fuck, _Dean thinks, and then huffs out a breath that is half hysterical laugh, because yes, that appears to be exactly what Lucifer is getting at.  His next breath huffs out a good deal harder, because the devil has used the grasp on Dean’s hair to slam him down over the table hard enough that his lungs struggle to remember how to function.  He’s still trying to catch in a breath when he presses his hands hard against the surface, fighting to rise, but Lucifer keeps him there with the iron strength of a hand in the center of his back.  “No, no, no, you’re gonna stay there nice and docile for me,” he says expansively, almost jovially, and Dean finds to his disgust that that’s exactly what he’s going to do.  He’s entirely immobilized by Lucifer’s grace, held so tight that he can’t so much as twitch a single finger._

_“Don’t worry kiddo, I promise to take off the straightjacket when we finally get down to business.  Won’t be half as much fun if I can’t feel you writhing under me.”  The cruel anticipation in his voice, the vivid imagery he evokes, is enough to send Dean’s gut to churning.  He feels his gorge trying to rise but even that is denied him, the only movement permitted the scrape of air in and out of his lungs.  “We just gotta get you ready, don’t we?”_

_The question is rhetorical, as they all are with Lucifer, but he’s not out of surprises yet, because Dean is startled enough that he would’ve jumped if he were able when he feels the touch of cold metal against his back, a razor-sharp point tracing the line of his spine lightly enough that it doesn’t break the skin.  He’s disoriented for a moment, because this is not at all what he was expecting, but a moment later all becomes clear as Lucifer brings the blade lower, sliding it deftly in between Dean’s boxers and his skin.  The denim and cotton split easily at the slightest pressure, both jeans and boxers parting to reveal still more naked flesh.  Lucifer slits them down the middle and then down each leg, until they sag loosely, held up only by the pressure of his belly holding the front of what used to be clothing against the table.  A second later he goes ahead and slices through the final sleeve of Dean’s shirts, revealing the bruises left by his tight grasp and leaving Dean entirely naked to the cool air of the bunker.  He can’t move his head, but it’s already turned toward that arm, and it’s then that Dean sees the tool with which Lucifer has stripped away his final, feeble protection._

_It’s an angel blade._

_It’s_ Castiel’s _angel blade._

_For the first time Dean is grateful that the grace-bindings keep him silent, because he can feel a keen of agony, less physical but more acute than that of his crushed knee, fighting to break free from his throat.  It would be a capitulation, a concession.  Lucifer would delight in it, and so his silence is a blessing._

_The archangel sets the blade down on the table, far enough that even if he had movement restored to him and strained as hard as he could, it would be well out of reach, but directly in Dean’s line of vision.  It is a taunt, deliberate, a reminder of the seraph that should be here, that would never dream of doing what Lucifer intends._

_It’s mid-March, and it’s warmed up just enough that they’ve turned the heat in the bunker off, but there’s still a chill in the air.  Goosebumps again chase each other across his back and Lucifer laughs softly, appreciatively, and the sound is so much more chilling than his loud sniggering could ever hope to be.  A hand, familiar, calloused, one that Dean has felt clap him on the shoulder or gently touch his back countless times, settles on his bare back lightly, and again Dean’s gorge tries and fails to rise.  The hand sweeps downward, past his waist and along the curve of one buttock, and a low hum of enjoyment rumbles through Lucifer’s chest just as the fingers tighten, squeezing firmly._

_“I was going to do it nice and proper, slick you up and stretch you out, really make it last,” Lucifer muses softly, and without the pain from his knee addling his brain, Dean’s wits are sharp enough that he sees exactly where Lucifer is going with this.  Maybe it makes him twisted, and he’ll probably reconsider when the pain starts, but so help him some piece of him is grateful for the promised violence and pain, because it removes any possibility of Dean’s body involuntarily…reacting to what Lucifer is going to—fuck it, if it’s going to happen to him he refuses to think circles around it—it means he won’t get hard from being raped.  Better to scream and bleed than give Lucifer the ammunition that even a physical response he has no control over would provide.  Better to be torn to shreds than for Cas to have to see any piece of Dean reacting to the touch of his fingers under the control of a monster._

_And somehow, in the meat of what is happening, Dean has lost the thread that reminded him that this was a dream.  A horror, yes, but only a dream.  Only a twisted creation of his damaged mind, dragging him through a nightmare of things that didn’t happen, things that aren’t really happening._

_Now, here, in this moment, they_ are _happening, and Dean knows no reality but this one._

_He hears nothing but Lucifer’s ominous chuckle, feels nothing but the hot breath of the devil on the back of his neck as he leans down, pants brushing against Dean’s naked thighs, and licks a stripe across Dean’s throat.  “Mmmm, I never get tired of the taste of terror and loathing.  And yours, Dean?  Yours is especially delicious.  What a coup, to get to stick it to the second Winchester.  I already had sweet Sammy squirming and whimpering under me, what a pleasure to get the matched set.  What a delight to be the only angel to get inside Dean Winchester.  What an absolute joy to know that, if I ever give him his body back, Castiel will never be able to touch you without making you flinch, without forcing you to remember.  Hashtag blessed!”  If Lucifer wanted him to think about Cas, the real Cas touching him, he shouldn’t have mentioned Sam, shouldn’t have planted such vivid imagery into Dean’s brain.  Dean sees red in a way few things could make him at the image, at the knowledge of what Lucifer did to Sam._

_It’s one thing, hurting Dean.  Debasing him, even—yes, even this, even raping him.  He’s expendable, if necessary.  But Sammy?  His kid brother?  The kid Dean practically raised?  That’s on another level._

_Lucifer seems to realize that his words have taken Dean out of the immediate, visceral reality of what is happening, because a moment later he draws Dean’s attention sharply back to him with a harsh smack to his right ass cheek.  The hand that struck him doesn’t lift.  Instead it tightens, squeezing hard, pulling Dean’s cheek aside to reveal the tight, dry channel between them.  He’s never been as aware of how_ fragile _the most tender parts of the human body are as he is in this moment.  How easily things can tear, and bleed, and—he hears the sharp snap of fingers behind him and suddenly the bindings keeping him immobile are gone.  He has just enough time to register this, to drag in a deeper breath, and then the hand that gripped his ass is reaching over to snag one of his wrists, Lucifer’s other hand plucking Dean’s other wrist off the table, pulling them together at the small of his back.  “Stay,” Lucifer murmurs, and of course Dean has no choice.  He can wriggle, can twist as if the bonds that hold his hands together were rope and not grace, but there’s no way out.  The grace bonds don’t even chafe at him, not giving him even the dignity that would be proof that he fought, that he did not go quietly, did not simply submit._

_He’s braced for it, whatever’s next, whatever is coming—or so he thinks, until he hears the rustle of clothing, fabric sliding along fabric.  A moment later, Lucifer tosses the balled up trenchcoat.  It soars over the table and settles itself over the back of the chair immediately opposite Dean, hanging neatly, ensuring that even if he turns his head away from the angel blade, he must look at this even more iconic representation of Castiel.  Lucifer is making sure that he has no choice but to think of Cas, remembering who the body violating him belongs to._

_More clothing rustles, the soft zrrrt of a zipper sliding down.  He may have destroyed Dean’s clothes, but his own—no,_ Castiel’s, _these clothes are Cas’s—he is more careful with._

_“I think you’ll be pleased, Deano,” Lucifer murmurs, as if confiding a juicy secret, “or you would’ve been if you hadn’t gone for the jewels and forced my hand.  Your angel here is surprisingly well-endowed.  Bet it would feel real good filling you up, if it weren’t going to tear you in half.”_

_The viciousness with which he hisses those final words is sharp enough that Dean involuntarily clenches his ass, tightening against the promise of what’s to come._

_Lucifer is delighted, humming happily.  “None of that, kiddo, it won’t stop me and it’s just gonna make it worse for you.”_

_Finally, for the first time in long minutes, Dean somehow finds his voice and discovers he’s got something to say.  “Fuck off,” he tells Lucifer, and it’s not particularly eloquent but it’s sure as hell heartfelt._

_“Oh come onnnnn,” Lucifer whines, “you couldn’t say ‘fuck you’?  What a missed opportunity, then I could’ve said, ‘no, fuck_ you,’ _it woulda been great.  Always trying to ruin my fun,” he sighs theatrically, and then, with another rustle of fabric, leans over and—in one of the grosser experiences of Dean’s life to date—spits directly onto his hole.  “There we go,” he mutters, “just enough to let me—”_

_He trails off, but what he doesn’t say in words he transmits quite clearly nevertheless.  There’s a pressure at his hole, even as a rope of the disgusting, thick saliva slides down his crack, nauseating him.   A pair of fingers, feeling more like two crowbars, press hard, ignoring the clear rejection of Dean’s tightened muscles, forcing their way past his rim._

_It hurts.  He expected this, he tells himself, but Jesus_ FUCK _it hurts.  The burning stretch is all-encompassing and if this is just two fingers, he cannot begin to imagine the kind of agony that is coming._

_He tries to keep silent but a low sound escapes, muffled behind his clenched teeth but unmistakable, and Lucifer purrs in response.  “That’s right, Dean, let me hear you,” he murmurs, and the use of Dean’s full name instead of that bastardization is suddenly far worse than the hated nickname._

_Dean resolves not to let another sound escape his lips, but the vow is broken as soon as it’s made, because Lucifer drags his fingers out and forces them back in, three this time, and the groan that grates from Dean is no more under his control than what Lucifer is doing to him.  This can’t just be what fingers feel like.  He’s gotta be…growing them, swelling them, doing something to make them feel so fucking_ big. 

_He just wants it to be over, tells himself the faster Lucifer gets down to it the faster he’ll be done, but then the fingers yank free, fighting the too-intense friction (a fingernail scrapes hard against him, drawing the first of the blood Dean’s pretty sure he’ll be shitting for a week), and Lucifer leans forward and spits again, even more copiously, then shoves his fingers back in, providing himself just enough lubrication to ensure that he’ll be able to force his way in, despite the resistance Dean’s muscles are putting up._

_His entire body is strung tight as a bow, hips writhing to try to escape the fingers, and he hates himself for fulfilling this prophecy, for squirming just as Lucifer swore he would, but he can’t begin to stop himself, could no more remain still than learn to breathe water sheerly by wishing.  “Yessss, Dean,” Lucifer groans appreciatively, “just like that.  So hot, so tight.  You’re gonna feel amazing wrapped around my dick.”  That’s apparently all the preparation Dean gets, because the fingers jerk free again and a second later Dean feels something bigger and hotter pressing against him.  He grits his teeth together, telling himself to just…go somewhere else, anywhere else.  To retreat inside his head, to get lost—but he’s never known how to do that.  Has never really been able to just check out when things get bad, no matter how much he might like to._

_Lucifer grabs Dean’s ass, pulls it apart, and forces his way in, carves out a space for himself and thoroughly earns the shout that Dean can’t suppress.  There’s grief in his voice somewhere underneath the pain, but oh, God, the pain is so much worse than he could’ve begun to imagine.  The first thrust tears him, the second even more, and the best that can be said of the third is that at least there’s now blood to slick the way._

_It is as brutal as Lucifer promised, and Dean is absolutely certain that he was right about the rest of it too, that he will literally rip Dean in half with the vicious pounding he delivers.  Dean is writhing against the table, desperate to get away, hands clawing at the air, working leg kicking as hard as he can, but he might as well be a gnat trying to overpower a man.  He is hopelessly outclassed, and Lucifer pins him down and fucks him hard, whispering his pleasure, groaning endless words about how good Dean feels, how tight and slick, what a good fuck he is, that he can’t believe he waited this long.  Dean loses track of the words, and at least that’s some small mercy, even if he can’t follow them because he’s too busy trying to remember how to breathe through the pain of being split apart, carved open from the inside out.  The table scrapes against the floor, rattled by the force of what Lucifer is doing to him, and Dean tries to focus on the sound, to anchor himself with it, but it slips away.  He lives in the pain now, in the violation._

_He has no idea how long it lasts.  Centuries, millennia, eons.  Probably no more than ten minutes.  Lucifer has made his point.  If Amara is truly as tuned into Dean’s soul as Lucifer thinks, surely she cannot help but feel his terror and pain, cannot help but hear it scream with the violation.  He’s pretty sure it’s never going to end, that this is his life now, his reality, this horror and agony visited upon him by the body of the one man he might have let do this to him voluntarily—might have let in, in an act that resembles this one only in the most rudimentary sense.  There would have been kind laughter then, soft kisses, tangled arms, and moans of pleasure rather than agony.  There would’ve been—but no, he can’t think about that, even as the trenchcoat in front of him refuses to let him think about anything but the one man who could’ve stopped this—and didn’t.  The angel who fought his way out to save Sam’s life, but couldn’t or wouldn’t to save Dean from this horror._

_It is ages before Lucifer groans deeper and louder, before suddenly there is additional heat and wetness amidst the screaming agony that is his ass.  Lucifer doesn’t do him the solid of pulling out right away.  He stays put, leaving his dick inside to start softening as he drapes himself over Dean’s back, panting hard in his ear.  From afar, Dean can hear himself, the hint of a whimper that edges his wheezing breaths.  He is a wounded animal, all higher function fucked out of him by the devil, and his body is trembling hard enough to rattle the solid table against the floor.  “Oh, Dean,” Lucifer purrs directly in his ear, “I kinda thought coming here I’d be taking one for the team, just doing what I had to to get Amara to come out and play, but what a ride.  Castiel has no idea what he’s been missing, keeping his distance all these years.  Not that I’m not grateful I got to pop your cherry.  Time waits for no archangel, though, and I’ve got places to go, things to do.  But let’s do it again sometime, Deano.”_

_He slides free with a horrible wet sound that makes Dean gag, even as blood and fluids slide out of him to coat his thighs.  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Lucifer says, suddenly standing in front of Dean, fully clothed and tidy, although Dean knows there ought to be blood and other, fouler substances on his pants.  “You’ll need that leg.”_

_Lucifer snaps his fingers and just like that the pain in his knee is back and the bindings holding him to the table are gone.  He slides off it, tumbling to the floor, and the pain when his ruined ass and pulverized knee hit the cold stone is finally a bridge too far._

_Maybe it shouldn’t be possible to pass out in a dream, but by some mercy, just this once, Dean does, and when awareness flees his dream-self, the real world reaches out to pull him back to the surface._

_Not that there’s any solace to be found there._

~*~

Dean wakes up screaming, and when the bile rises in his throat, he doesn’t even try to stop it this time.  He rolls over and vomits off the side of the bed, chokes, vomits again.

He can still feel the phantom pain, ghosts of blood and semen trickling out of him.  He retches, coughing, the bile burning his throat and nose, tears and snot dripping down his face.

Dean had thought, for one glorious day, he might have paid his dues, given enough in reliving the reality of it, might have been through enough to be, if not free of it, at least given a reprieve—but it was ridiculous to think so.

It’s not over; he knows now as surely as he’s ever known anything that this?  This is just the beginning.  The reliving of reality was just the shallows, and now Dean is being pulled steadily out to sea.  He doesn’t want to imagine what additional horrors lurk under its surface, conjured by his own sadistic imagination.

Dean has thought once or twice in his life that he might welcome death, if it came for him.

But he’s never _wished_ for it.  Not till tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. Yeah. Sorry about that. It's not gonna, like, get *better* from here, but this is (probably?? maybe?? I think??) the most graphic we're gonna get. I need to go recover from writing this, but I will endeavor to make sure you don't wait nearly as long for another update, and now that I've got momentum, you may see another chapter sooner than you think.
> 
> If the spirit moves you, stop by the comments, let me know if you're still reading and invested in this (it's been foreeeever), and tell me how much you hate me.
> 
> It cannot possibly be more than I hate myself.


End file.
